Zoey and Jackie look at Lucille, giving her a moment of peace, and before they can move Coop comes screaming onto the floor outside, yelling at everybody and nobody: "I just had the most awesome gunshot today! Guy's totally stabilized! Coop 1, Death 0! Booyah!" Jackie tells her let him have this one, and they begin to clean her up. Zoey is halting, her speech even more stilted than usual, as they start to work on the body.
Is this the right thing, the Jackie thing, the less-alone thing? Or is it softness, weakness, the too-close thing? What will Jackie think? If she laughs, Zoey will die. She'll turn those giant eyes on Zoey and she'll feel as big as a gnat and she'll pin her to the wall with some withering comment. But Zoey knows what she has to do. "I... want to do her eyebrows," she finally says, and Jackie nods. "Right. I have a makeup pencil in my purse," she says tenderly. Zoey fixes her wig, pushing locks beneath it. A face to meet the faces that you meet.
Mo-Mo sings to the little boy in Arabic, all susurrations and sibilance, encouraging cadences; it's beautiful, and mournful. The room is dark. It fills the room; it fills the floor. He hasn't let go of the boy's hand yet, not for a moment. Wherever he is, he shouldn't be alone.
Jackie finally takes Grace's picture out of her purse and unfolds it, looking for a moment at its grey sky, the emotionless faces as they drift apart, before taking out a yellow highlighter. Jackie uncaps the marker and gives her daughter a sun as big as the world, as warm and bright as chicken soup. "There," she bites. "Was that so hard?"
It is, and she knows it. Grace can't depend on anything for her sunshine, not like Mommy. There must be something else she can do, there must be a way she can be stronger, because Grace deserves more, and better. We come into the world alone. We don't deserve to stay that way.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see why vlogger Sean Crespo thinks he and Jackie have a lot in common in No Prior Knowledge.









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