I sit down next to Omar, our shoulders briefly brushing against each other as I take the guitar on to my lap.

"I'll snap one of the strings," I warn him.

After wiping some of the dust off from the bridge, he takes my fingers and places them on the strings. My wrist feels weird, holding it at this angle. 

"This is the G chord," he says, his hand still draped over mine on the strings. 

I run my thumb down the strings, not completely sure if that sounded right. Whatever that means. I'm not sure if it sounds good but I do know that it didn't sound that way when Omar demonstrated it to me first.

"How's that feel?" he asks, finally letting go of my hand.

My palm is a little sweaty but my wrist stays in place, too afraid to lose the places on the strings. 

"Feels unnatural."

This makes him laugh a little. I'm glad my mediocracy and tone deafness could be of amusement to him. It makes the situation feel a little less tense. Sitting this close to Omar has me rethinking every little move I make.

"How many more for a song?" I finally let go of the chord.

"For a verse, you could get by with three more," he replies. 

"Three? I think I've already forgotten the G."

"It takes practice."

"And practice takes time."

His shoulders somewhat slump after my comment. I guess he wasn't thinking about the same thing as I was. Meanwhile, that's all I can think about. Being in this house, his mother's house while my own mother has no idea why her only daughter isn't picking up the phone, makes me obsessively remember I don't have much time left. And neither does he.

"You could practice as long as you're here," he says. "Here."

He takes my fingers between his again, directing each to a different string and fret. Except this time, I feel slightly nervous. Nervous that I'm sitting way too close to him and that I somehow like our knees touching. It's one of those crooked moments that make everything that happens afterwards feel weird and twisted. I know where these thoughts lead which could only mean that I shouldn't be thinking them at all. I don't dare to look his way, afraid he's thinking them too. 

When Omar finally moves away and I keep strumming the same chord as if I'll have any recall of it anyway. His mom calls him from somewhere in the house. I straighten up and he tells me to stay as long as I want to practice and that he'll be back. When he leaves the room, my body relaxes and it feels like I can think straight again.

Outside his window, the branches of an aged tree sway periodically. The wind picks up and then dissipates. The overreaching twigs scrape the side of the window in a careful beat. I keep strumming the same strings, sometimes making them sound poor and I stop midway, afraid that I've caused one of them to snap off. I've seen that sort of thing happen to people on the internet. A string strummed loose and essentially scarring the guitarist's face. I stop playing and I can hear Omar and his mother conversing from somewhere in the house. I look back outside the window, listening to the scratches until their voices kind of blur into the background like white noise.

Time passes by and I'm unaware of just how much has until a feminine scream cuts me out of my thoughts. At first, I think it's coming from outside and so I am inclined to go and peer out of the window. I push the guitar off my lap and leave it laying on the bed. When I go to stand up, there's another scream until it changes into a series of yells. When I realize it's Omar's name that's being yelled, I rush out the bedroom door and down the corridor.

I stop in front of one of the bedrooms, the door open wide. Omar's bent down, clenching his stomach and before I can say anything his body sort of caves in and he falls on to the carpet. His eyes are closed and mouth partially open. I can't tell if he's still breathing from where I'm standing in the doorway.

"Omar," his mom cries, shaking his shoulder and trying to pull him up. It's no use though. He's completely motionless sprawled on the beige carpet.

Near his face are small dark stains on the carpet. Blood now that I move closer.

"What happened to him?" I ask, too many thoughts pacing about my mind. It isn't his time yet. Right? He still has a few days left. He had more time than me. What day is it today? God damn it.

"We need to get him to a hospital," his mom pushes herself up with help of the mattress. "Help me get him downstairs please."

So I do just that. I'm working on autopilot, doing whatever his mom suggests because my own brain has frozen up. Omar wakes up when we're midway down the stairs, his eyes drowsily reopening.

"Omar," I say, trying to engage him. "Hey."

He pushes his legs straight so that he's partially balanced himself. Leaning against the railing and my hands still around his other arm, too scared of letting him go just yet.

"Omar, hey," I say again.

"What happened," he stammers.

"Come, sit down, sit down," his mom says before helping him sit down on the carpeted step. I leave them for a moment to retrieve some tissues from the kitchen downstairs. When I get back, they're both a little quiet.

"How are you feeling?" I ask as I hand over the tissues. His mom wipes some of the blood from around his nose.

"I don't know," he looks down as he answers.

"Has this happened to you before?" his mom asks this time. I stand in the corner of the staircase, just 5-6 steps down from where they sit together with my arms crossed over my chest.

"No," he takes the tissue from her, wiping his nose quickly himself. "But it's okay. I'm okay now."

His mom's fine lines, ones that I must have missed before, are now so much more pronounced with worry. She watches his face in silence for a while before suggesting he come the rest of the way downstairs and lie down on the couch. We help him down and his mom goes to fix something for him in the kitchen, leaving us alone for a short while.

"What's she doing?" he asks me.

"I don't know, making you some juice or something I think."

He laughs with his eyes closed and then rubbing them with his fingers. "Ah," he says almost whimsically.

"You gave us a scare there," I tell him a little seriously.

"How'd I manage that?"

"I thought something awful had happened."

"Well, to be fair, it did feel pretty awful."

"I thought your time was up," I say more seriously, careful that his mom doesn't over hear us.

"No," he smiles, languidly. His eyes half closed.

"I forgot," I say after a quick glance over my shoulder. "But what date did your stag mail say again?" 

He doesn't reply immediately but instead, after a prolonged moment, looks behind me at his mom entering the room with an orange drink.

"Drink this, it'll help."

He gets up unenthusiastically and drinks the whole glass in two chugs. 

"Gw-ughh," he pulls a face after finishing it.

She leaves after taking the glass from him and tells him to rest. 

"We can go and see a doctor about this, if you feel okay to," she tells him from the doorway.

"No hospitals, ma," he throws his head back on the cushion.

"Why not?"

"They're out to kill us, you know that," he's no longer joking around.

"That's a bit dark," I tell him.

"The truth is rarely anything but," he says with his eyes still closed. 

"What if it happens again? We were about to take you to the hospital when you first blacked out."

"Well don't then."

I pull a face. "And what is it you think we should do if it happens again."

"Let it pass."

"Let it pass?"

"Yup."

"That's easier said than done. You were unconscious back there."

"No hospitals, Liberty."

"Why not?"

"They killed my dad, that's why."

I freeze when he says that. The sound of slippers from outside the room makes me turn and I catch a shadow shuffling away. Shit, his mom was still there listening to us. I turn back to Omar, full of questions.

"What do you mean?"

"My dad got stag mail too," he tells me. "The only thing he had wrong with him was his shitty diet. It's how he got diabetic but that's all he had. He took good care after he was diagnosed. He'd been living with diabetes for almost all his life but all it took was one trip to the hospital, closer to his date and they killed him."

"Why'd he go to the hospital?"

"Blood tests," Omar smiles cunningly, like he's telling me the plot of a movie. "He went in for his blood tests and stayed for sepsis."

"Are you serious?"

He pushes himself up with his hands and sits up, leaning on the cushions.

"After everything you've seen the past couple of days, how is it that you're still surprised?"

"They can't be killing us all, Omar. I mean we're still here." I'm still here.

Omar wipes his nose again, this time there's blood on his fingers.

"I don't know Liberty but I'll tell you this, I've never had a nose bleed all my life."

"Shit," I pick up some more tissues and them over to him. He wipes the last bit of the blood and for a while it stops to bleed. "Maybe it's all just a coincidence."

"Maybe," he looks at me and falls silent. "But anyway, this is nothing. Nosebleeds don't kill people."

He continues.

"Why don't you bring the guitar down?"

I let out a brief chuckle, "So your ears can bleed too?"

He shakes his head and I oblige. I run up the steps and grab his guitar from his room. On my way back down, I hear someone sniffling. I slow down, looking into Ms. Ayad's room like some kind of creep. Her back's turned as she sits on the edge of her bed. I catch a look of the tissue she wipes her face with and that sends me downstairs. I'm not sure why she's crying. Could we have set her off?

I walk into the living room stiffly, distracted from what I'd just seen. Omar is sitting a little more straight on the couch. I hand him the guitar by the neck.

"You ready for the next chord?"

"Omar-"

"It's a F minor," he looks up at me, completely unaware of his mother's grief. "Super easy one."

"I think I'm happy with the G," I tell him honestly. "Besides, let's hear you play."

He looks slightly sheepish and pulls my wrist down to the couch. 

"I'm serious, play something," I say.

He shakes his head but nevertheless starts to play the tune of a song that honestly, could be any song. It isn't until he mentions the band that I realize I have never heard it. He plays so effortlessly that I can't tell one string from the other. Watching him, I know that I've been kidding myself thinking I could do anything remotely remarkable at all with the time I have left. Let alone learn an instrument.

I must have been deep in my thoughts because he's stopped playing and I didn't notice.

"You play really well," I say, not knowing what else to say as I'm put on the spot.

It happens quick, so quick that I'm not even sure it was real for a moment. But he leans my way and presses his lips to mine. The feeling of my stomach in knots as he pulls away makes me certain that I didn't just imagine that.

His eyebrows are knitted together in slight uncertainty. He's waiting for me to say something. 

"What?"  he asks, softly.

Did I just say that out loud?

"Liberty?" Lib. It's Lib.

"I need the bathroom, excuse me," and I dash for the living room door.