He just stared at me, a sea of green and silver locked onto my face, the muscles in his throat working. To be the subject of such intense focus was disconcerting at first, but I’d gotten used to it over the past hour and had resorted to staring back at him, nudging him inside my head, trying to cajole him into saying something. Come on. Talk to me. Tell me something. Anything, I said silently. You can’t just shut down. But still not a word. Clearly, he thought sinking into a catatonic state was a perfectly acceptable coping mechanism in light of the situation.
