Jo hates—fires of hell first hates—looking week. Hates that she said those words. Hates that she can't even be sure whether she picked the right person to tell them to. Even when that thought crosses out any alternate option to say them to anyone she might find at home, too. That would be worse. She can't.

(How do you live up or live down your own death cemented in someone's mind?)

She swallowed, "Yeah, okay."

The steel part of her spine wants to stare at him doing it. To the flash possibility of doing it, chin up, shoulders flat, her nails into her palm even if the crescents turned red, and show the fuckers she's made of stronger things than jumping at shadows. But something in her feels shaken by it. Not shattered. But like the crack in all those mirrors is somehow also mirrored in a crack down the center of her suddenly, too.

Jo looked out toward the people milling in the road,
between shops and buildings instead, hating herself, too.