“I know,” she says.

We walk at the back of the group, past the still-abandoned buildings with their dark windows, over the bridge that spans the river-marsh.

“Yeah, sometimes life really sucks,” she says. “But you know what I’m holding on for?”

I raise my eyebrows.

She raises hers, too, mimicking me.

“The moments that don’t suck,” she says. “The trick is to notice them when they come around.”

Then she smiles, and I smile back, and we climb the stairs to the train platform side by side.

Since I was young, I have always known this: Life damages us, every one. We can’t escape that damage.

But now, I am also learning this: We can be mended. We mend each other.