The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

want her so much, my heart feels heavy, like I’m grieving. Is this what they meant about that stomach feeling? They didn’t say it felt this sad.
    The mini-golf park is old and really narrow, so even though Jared, Mel and Nathan are already on hole number three, they’re still pretty much just right there, laughing, looking over to where we sit. Especially Nathan.
    “Ich esse, wir essen.”
Meredith looks up. “I’m hungry.”
    “Just what I was thinking,” Nathan calls. Henna lets go of my hand. “Anyone want any food?” Nathan asks, coming over.
    “A hot dog,” Meredith says.
    Nathan raises his eyebrows.
    “A hot dog,
please
,” Meredith says.
    “I’ll help you,” Henna says, getting up. She looks back to me. “You want anything, Mikey?”
    “Ich liebe,”
Meredith mutters under her breath,
“du liebst–”
    I aim a sideways kick at her. “Nah, I’m good.”
    I watch them head back to the hut which sells your standard mini-golf food: hot dogs and nachos. I watch Henna go inside with Nathan. Jared’s watching, too, then he looks at me and I know what he’s thinking. He’s thinking it’s long past time I gave Henna up.
    And maybe he’s right.
    But she held my hand again. And said she was seeing things more clearly.
    I wish I was.
    “Two!” Mel shouts, triumphantly.

    Midway through our second round of mini-golf – Mel won the first with a score of fifty-nine; Jared had eighty, Nathan ninety-seven, which was pleasing – we have a surprise visitor.
    “Hey,” a tired-looking Dr Call Me Steve says, holding his car keys, still wearing hospital scrubs.
    “Hey,” Mel says, every word of her body language turning into a smile. “You came.”
    “Who could say no to putt-putt golf?”
    “Almost anybody,” Meredith says, writing down answers about the adventures of Dieter and Frederika in Hamburg.
    “Can I play in?” Steve asks, after Mel introduces him around. (“Wow,” he said, gently palpating my nose. “That’s healing amazingly fast.”)
    “You can have my spot,” Nathan says. “I’m doing so bad you’ll be lucky to break a hundred.”
    Steve takes Nathan’s putter. “I like a challenge.”
    We’re on the new course at the back of the mini-golf place, though it’s only new like New Mexico is new. It used to be jungle-themed but the statues of “natives” were so racist they all had to be removed. Now it’s just leafy with one chipped-paint, fibreglass tiger in the middle, emitting a tinny, pre-recorded roar every four minutes.
    Henna immediately joined Mel at the arrival of Dr Steve – for moral support, I guess – so Meredith and I get Nathan all to ourselves on the bench. Yippee.
    “How you feeling, Mike?” he says, sitting down between us.
    “Oh, you know,” I say, not meeting his eye. “Just the physical and emotional fallout of a near-death experience. Nothing big.”
    He laughs. Which I find irritating. “I know,” he says. Which I find even more irritating.
    I get up. “Anyone want any more food?”
    “Nein,”
Meredith says, crunching a nacho.
“Ich habe viele Nachos.”
    “You don’t like me,” Nathan says, and I stop.
    “Who says I don’t like you?”
    “Every single vibe coming off you. Unless I’m wrong?”
    I hesitate – not on purpose – just long enough to make it awkward.
    “I suppose I kind of get it,” he says. “You’re already ninety per cent out of here, aren’t you? All you want to do now is spend the last weeks as close to your friends as possible because you don’t want to think about leaving them behind when you go. But here comes this
interloper
, breaking up your tight-knit group right at the time you want it the most.”
    “Well,” I say. “Yeah.”
    He looks at his hands, flexing them and unflexing them. “When we lived in Florida, my sister was a full-on indie kid, so I became kind of a mascot to them. The little one” – he glances at Meredith – “who tagged along and said funny things.” He looks at his