She smiled. “No, of course not, Aaron. It’s perfectly normal to think about ending your life sometimes. I’d be a little worried if the thought had never crossed your mind.” Then she laughed as if that should have been funny or comforting or something. And she looked across the table at him reassuringly, and he smiled back at her in a boyish, trusting way.

“Thanks,” he said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

And after that, the counselors left their numbers on little cards and on posters on the walls of the school for kids who felt lonely or depressed or needed someone to talk to. “They’ll be back in two months,” the principal had told the students at an assembly in the gym, “to follow up with anyone who needs to talk some more.”

Maybe he’d gotten the idea from that—the double suicide and the meetings and the counselor with the eyes of a doe. It was hard to say. Aaron had tried to trace the exact origin of the idea, but finally he’d realized that sometimes ideas just come to you fully formed, as this one had. And in the end it doesn’t really matter so much where they come from as it does where they lead you, what you do with them.

“It’ll all be over soon,” Jessie said as they entered the bedroom. Her voice was more agitated now, excited. Maybe fear had crept into it.

“No, soon it’ll all begin.” He walked over to the window and twisted the blinds shut to close out the warm afternoon sunshine. A few slivers of sunlight cut through the spaces between the blinds and landed on the lightly ruffled blankets on Jessie’s parents’ bed—streaks of light and darkness lying next to each other, side by side. He walked through the zebra-shadowed room to her arms. “Soon it’ll all begin,” he repeated. “And then we’ll be together forever, and nothing will ever be able to keep us apart.”

“I’m ready,” she whispered.

“It’s a cruel world,” said Aaron Jeffrey Kincaid.

“It’s a cruel world,” echoed Jessica Rembrandt.

“But our love will unite us forever.”

“Our love will unite us forever. ...”

Aaron pulled the polished stainless steel hunting knife out of his backpack and led Jessie to the whirlpool. The knife had a serrated edge on one side and a wickedly curved blade on the other. They’d picked it out together last week at a sporting goods store at the mall. The two of them had been planning this for weeks, to make sure everything was perfect. After they found the knife, Aaron had sent her in to pay for it with cash while he waited outside “to keep watch.” He’d made her think it was all her idea. He was good at that.

Jessie turned on the whirlpool.

The motor hummed, sending jets of warm water churning at their feet.

“I’ll go first,” she said, “because I love you.” Her voice was shaking. Her breathing, fast.