SHORT STORIES

Hugo-

Day one, the hottest day in July. The kind of hot that makes the neighbors forgo underwear and plant themselves in front of oscillating fans. Feet planted in small kiddie pools filled with tepid tap water, topped off with bagged ice from the corner market. The breeze from the fan casting across the iced pools does nothing to diminish the warmth from their radiating bodies. Instead it pushes the sweat further across their faces and thighs until they are all shiny with sweat.

It's nearly impossible to forget day one. You try, yet day one is the day you'll scramble for breath. You'll put on the bravest of faces to give your daughter Thea oxygen as you hold the side of her head to your chest. She will appreciate the firm pressure you apply to her quivering body. The grief inundating from her youthful frame, forcing you back- one, two, three, steps until you both collapse onto the couch. Sweat and tears, they're all the same.

How can a girl live without her mother? How will I breathe without her modeling what a strong exhale looks like? 

It will be all she can say.

You wonder in your emotional greed, Where does she keep all of the passwords? Thea's birth certificate? Is she allergic to anything?

Raeann-

Their day one is polar opposite of your day one. The body that carried you through life for the past four decades decided the narrative of living a nice long life is a lie. To find out that you're going to die is far less painful than hearing that you are dead. The dead don't hear pain. The dead don't feel it either. 

It's terminal, you have weeks at best Raeann. I'm so sorry. 

You are sent home with instructions of getting your affairs in order. Pamphlets titled, "How to tell your loved ones that you are dying," as if there is a simple bullet point plan to button up all of your affairs before you go. 

Step 1, I'm dying. But I left a few lasagnas in the freezer for busy nights. 

Hugo-

Planning a funeral is foreboding. The weatherman says to expect more heat hazes. You don't know exactly what that is, but you've already spent hours on the internet searching for a cure. What's another few minutes? 

Heat haze: also called heat shimmer, refers to the inferior mirage observed when viewing objects through a mass of heated air.

Relief floods your body, panic eases up. This isn't the end, it's all a mirage. It has to be. 

Raeann-

Everything after the first day is now called the in between, and that's just how you've come to accept it. Call your mother more, but not so much that she suspects that there is something to be worried about. Mothers know. 

Revel in the fact that the word hug happens to be the first three letters of your husband's name, as he is the best hugger you've ever met. Hugging him a little bit longer feels like a possible cure for the incurable.

Forget the pamphlets, your family deserves a better send off than that. The blogs online say to leave a video diary for your daughter because she might forget the way the dimples tucked into your cheeks are deep enough to hold a cat's eye marble in each of them.

Don't let her forget.

The idea of a camera taping your face not looking like your face is unsettling. It is then you decide on cassettes, they're the happy medium. Even if cassette tapes are "so out of style," they might be even more treasured due to the rarity of them.

Nothing screams a mothers legacy like antiquated methods of communication. Might as well break out the typewriter and ribbon of ink. 

Hugo-

In-laws, they're a mixed bag. Naturally they have known your beloved Raeann for the longest. They created her so there is ownership there.

Let them visit and call and video chat.

It's all that they will get of her.

You'll be left with the daughter you share, and the smell of her lilac shampoo on the bed linens you agreed to buy at the big box store. The in-laws won't get to smell her again, but you will, at least a little longer before the next load goes in the wash.

Raeann-

To make a mixed tape you have to consider two things:

Who you're making the tape for and the occasion.

Remind yourself that this isn't a John Hughes movie, and Thea won't be walking away with the love of her life but rather losing you. Of course there are times when you hear a little melody on the radio and think to yourself, Thea would love this song. Then, add bits of wisdom and sayings to the playlists, for days when she needs advice but you aren't there to give it.

A mother knows exactly what kind of music will make her daughters eyes sparkle, even if it is followed by a tiny eye roll. It's some kind of magic to possess this kind of knowing about a teenager even if she is your child.

You wonder if anyone else will ever know your daughter this way.

Hugo-

She told you that there'd be tapes. That you'd have to give them to Thea, maybe one morning as you sip your coffee black and dark roasted the way that you like it. 

It's important Hugo, it's all I have left to give her. Well, and you of course. 

Those dimples, you won't be able to say no to her and so you agree with a gentle head nod and deep hug. 

Through sickness and health was the vow? What about death and grief, what's the vow look like after that?

More haziness.

Raeann-

Your last day comes twenty-nine days after your first. Cliche, that's what the last thirty days will be. Like a film reel, memories click and spin for one last viewing in your mind's eye. Not in black and white, but in vibrant colors of finger painted construction paper and alabaster hydrangeas in wedding centerpieces. 

Wait until Thea nods off in the corner chair of your room, wrapped in the blanket you both sewed together out of your old shirts. Absorb the tiny bit of warmth from Hugo's hand wrapped around the frail fingers on yours. These hands spent many hours laced together over the years and now his hands will spend hours pressing play for Thea.

It's time for your strong exhale.

Hugo-

Pull the old cassette player down from the attic, blow off the decades of dust. 

Imagine the look on your daughter's face when the carefully curated tapes are placed in her young hands with three freckles alongside the edge of her knuckles. The freckles lightly kiss her milky skin, and you breathe out a little in relief knowing that they look ordinary.

She won't want the tapes. Her eyes might brim with orbs of salted water. A sense of begging will slip past her lips, Please daddy I'm not ready yet. 

You stare at the dimples she inherited from her mother, pressing your warm thumb into one of them as you hold gently to her chin. Picturing the future, you wonder who will take her wedding dress shopping, and who will take her phone calls if she loses a baby. 

It will be you of course.

SHORT STORY NO:2

SAMIL THE TRICKSTER

I'm not sure how long it was before I realized that the shuttle train never stopped, probably about the time it dawned on me that the people who had gotten on with me were gone. The train is supposed to run from Grand Central to Times Square, one stop, five minutes at the absolute most. But it had been… how long had it been? I don't know, I was reading my book. I can space out pretty bad sometimes. Family lore has it that I slept right through a freak tornado that ripped off our roof. But the bluish fluorescent lights on the train flickered out with a hum, and when they turned on again, I realized something was amiss. The windows were turned into mirrors by the underground darkness, and in them was a face with a mischievous grin, complemented by a rakish light in the eyes and a tumble of curly brown hair. Samill, the trickster.

He materialized from the window. "It's been some time since we've seen each other."

"I can't say I've missed you much, Samill," I replied, sighing and putting my book down. He laughed heartily in response.

"All of the wonders I've shown you and you don't even have a smile to spare for me?" He had a note of mock offense in his voice. "I guess I'll have to take this little adventure to someone else."

"Go ahead. I won't mind."

He smiled, more broadly still. "Just kidding, it has to be you."

"Why?"

"You're the only one who's done it before and let's just say I need you to survive."

He meant that I'm the only mortal to travel to the realm of the gods and return both alive and a mortal. I did it when I was a girl; it was a whole thing I can't get into now, but Samill was behind that, too. He damn near got me killed.

"I don't need anything from you this time, Samill. And I'm not a kid anymore. Why would I take this risk?"

Samill appraised me. "Indeed, you are no longer a kid." He turned his head to the side and held his fingers to his eyes like a camera lens. "A fine young woman, might I say. Are you in want of a companion?"

"No," I replied flatly.

"Alright," he said, smiling. "No need to be testy, just asking. Anyway, I need you to get something that was stolen from me."

"Get it yourself."

"Oh no, I can't show my face there. But you would be able to slip right in and out, unnoticed."

"Surely there's some other mortal in this world or another, aching for adventure or in need of your favors. I don't need anything." I looked down at my phone to check the time, but the screen displayed Samill's mischievous face in profile.

Samill looked at me seriously for some time, calculating something as he always did. "How is your sister, Stella? She must be twenty-seven years old now, am I right?"

The air went out of me. What was he planning to do to her?

He narrowed his eyes, a playful grin forming in one corner of his mouth. "Don't worry, love. Your sister is fine. I kept my end of that bargain."

"And I paid a huge price. We're even."

He crouched in front of me. Up close, I could see the glow of his skin and smell his hair; unearthly and unfathomable.

"I can give you your magic back. You and Stella."

I froze, not daring to breathe. Samill took our magic in exchange for Stella's life. We'd lived more than ten years without it. Sometimes, I wonder if I dreamed that I had it: a memory of fire dancing on my fingertips or chasing Stella on the surface of a lake; ephemeral, slipping from me like water in a palm. A gnawing, gaping longing opened up in me.

"Ah," Samill said, standing up smiling. "You've missed your magic. I do wonder sometimes how any mortal can bear life without it."

"Magic attracts the gods and all mortals are better off without that."

Samill grabbed his chest. "My poor heart. Come, let me show you something."

He beckoned me to the front of the train. It had stopped moving. With a dramatic swipe of his hand, the front of the train melted away, revealing the damp entrance to a long tunnel.

"I need you to find the goddess Badha and retrieve the emerald she's guarding. She's blind and can only sense the gods. You will be able to go without notice," he looked down at me out of the corner of his eye.

I shot him a sharp look. "The underworld? Last time was different it was the heavenly gods. This is the realm of the dead, I won't make it out. They won't let me cross back into the living."

"If you speak your secret name to the guardian, he will let you pass alive. And if you give me the emerald, I'll return your magic to you and your sister."

"But my secret name is for my passage into the afterlife. I can't speak it twice."

"That's just superstition. Encouraged by the gods, mind you, because your secret name has power and the gods know it. But you can speak it more than once. I give you my word."

I faced him and looked defiantly into his eyes. "No, sorry. I don't need the magic, neither does Stella. Find someone else."

Samill laughed. "Well, Phoebe, I'd hoped you'd come around on your own. But barring that," he shoved me through the front of the train and I landed right on my face in the rock and the mud. Before I could stand up, he smiled at me and waved his arm, making himself and the train disappear over my head.

I made a hearty effort to bang on the now closed wall where Samill had thrown me through, but it didn't work. If I was going to get out of there, I knew I'd have to descend this tunnel to figure it out. I pulled up my phone. Dead. Technology didn't really work in the magical realms. The gods are terrified of it; Google is better at reading our minds than they are. It took some time for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but when they did I noticed tiny dots of light embedded in the rock. I hit my face on the occasional tree root that was hanging from the top of the tunnel.

I can't say how long I walked, but at some point, minutes, hours or days later I arrived at a dried up river bed that I knew I'd have to cross to continue. Water is powerful and even its absence can be a trap set by a sorcerer or a god. I crouched down and put my ear to the ground. The whoosh of running water filled my ears. Some kind of underground river. I pressed my finger into a spot of soft mud beneath a rock and pearly liquid that looked like a cross between clouded water and honey emerged. I recognized it from old stories my grandmother told Stella and me, the River of No Name that runs through the center of the earth. It would expect payment of some kind, I reckoned. All enchanted crossings did. But I had nothing on me. I was unprepared. I tried my phone, since it was the most expensive thing I had. I placed it gingerly on the rocks, but moments later the phone launched itself back at me. Ok, that wasn't going to work. I thought for a few minutes and then realized: the river would want my name. I leaned over to the rocks and whispered "Phoebe," but the rocks let out an agitated hiss and rumbled. I wiped my hands on my jeans and looked up, cursing Samill. The river wanted my secret name. I was forced to trust what Samill said about my secret name not losing power if I say it more than once. I bent my face even lower this time and said, in as low a voice as possible, the name spoken to me once by my mother the day I was born and written on my heart, Efweth.

Water coursed through the rocks, gold and white and pleasant. It leveled off when it was a few inches high and pulled itself to either side, allowing me to pass over the rocks. Eventually, I came to the end of the tunnel which was a large, circular cavern with walls made of rocks and mud. The light in the rocks was brighter here, so I was able to see more easily. It seemed I was alone. I walked around the room, my hand on the walls, feeling for some exit or hidden door, but I came up empty. I looked up, but whatever was above me was either too high or too occluded by the darkness for me to see it.

"Ok, Samill. What am I doing here? Help me out?"

Just then, an enormous woman descended from the ceiling; twenty-feet tall with a tangled mass of hair falling over her shoulders. She seemed old, older than the earth, but also ageless. As soon as I noticed something that would indicate her age, a wrinkle, a grey hair, it would fade away before I could be sure it was there. This must be Badha.

"Samill? Are you here you nasty little imp? I told you if I ever saw you again I'd rip you to shreds and it would take you three millennia to stitch yourself together."

I pushed myself into the wall and held my breath, not wanting to make a sound. The goddess moved a few steps forward and backward, shaking the cavern as she did.

"No it can't be Samill. He couldn't be... But who said your name? Why would anyone speak of you here?"

She moved her arm around the cavern to feel. I pressed myself further against the wall.

"Make yourself known, whoever you are. Another useless goblin? Be gone, goblin. I've nothing for you here."

I looked all over her for some sign of an emerald, nothing on her neck, nothing on her fingers or in her hair. She made herself some kind of beverage and after she was done, she sat down with her great legs out in front of her. I was standing next to her massive calf, I could have reached across and grabbed it if I wanted to. She sipped from her cup and paused, putting her ear up like a curious dog. She sipped again and got on all fours. I had to run toward the entrance of the cavern to avoid her as she changed positions. Then she put her ear to the ground and knelt up.

"Mortal, I know you're here."

Damnit, Samill.

"Tell me why you're here, mortal."

I neither replied nor moved so much as an eyelid.

"The river told me mortal. I'll say your secret name if you don't answer me. I don't think you want that."

I wasn't sure what the consequences of that would be; should I call her bluff or answer her? Everyone in my culture is given a secret name at birth, whispered in their left ears by our mothers at the moment of birth. We are never to speak it until we die. We were told to always guard it as the name possesses great power that could be used to harm us or someone else.

"Did Samill send you?"

"Yes," I croaked out. I was very thirsty.

She laughed, quietly at first and then so forcefully the walls shook.

"Tell me, mortal, what did he tell you to get?"

"An emerald."

She laughed again, this time wiping tears from her cheeks.

"My sweet child, Samill knows I don't have that emerald. What did he promise you?"

My stomach dropped. What had he set me up for?

"Eternal youth? Love? Please, tell me." She was still laughing and occasionally broke into wheezing coughs.

"He said he'd return my magic."

She stopped laughing. "Who took it?"

"He did, Samill."

"Why?"

"In exchange for my sister's life."

"And you believed him, when he said he'd return your magic?"

"I don't know. I refused him. But when I refused he threw me down here."

She brought her hand to her chin like she was thinking very hard.

"I don't have the emerald, dear. Samill knows that."

"Ok, then, I'll just get out of your hair."

She cackled. "You're in the realm of the dead. You can't return. You must know that."

"Samill said…"

"Samill lied," she said, still wiping tears of laughter from her blank eyes. "You can't return. And I'm hungry, come here." She swiped her arms out again, narrowly missing me.

I ran again to the entrance of the cavern and had nearly managed to get away when a tree root ripped from the floor and pulled me back. "I told you, there's no returning for you, mortal. Samill as good as killed you. I don't know what you did to piss him off."

I had no weapons. No magic. No way out. I closed my eyes and readied myself for my fate. I wondered what death would be like if I died already in the underworld. Then I got an idea. Lining the walls of the cavern and up into the ceiling were tree roots, the ones that brought me back into the cavern when I tried to escape. I escaped from the root holding me and ran across, another root shot out and chased me. I ran back and forth around the cavern, narrowly avoiding the roots as I did.

The whole time Badha was laughing. "Mortals always fight so hard. So entertaining. Well, I'll be back in a minute when you're dead." She stood up but fell right away as the roots pulled her back down. I'd trapped her in them. She pulled and grabbed at them, breaking a few, but they held. I knew they wouldn't hold long, so I made one final move. I leapt up onto the roots holding Badha, the tips of new ones chasing me as I did, and ran headlong into her chest, dodging out of the way at the last second. The root didn't find me, but did find Badha's chest, shooting straight through it and out the other side.

She gasped and choked. "No, no. This isn't possible." She weakly pulled at the root in her chest, but then she started to disintegrate into the dirt below her, her flesh and hair and clothes falling into so much dust.

I was stunned. I thought I would incapacitate her, not kill her. I had no idea what the tree was made of that it was strong enough to kill a goddess, but I ran out of there as quickly as my feet would carry me. The River of No Name parted for me, it did not expect a second payment. I clambered back up the tunnel as fast as I could, falling and tripping as I went. I reached the end of the tunnel, still closed off.

"Samill! Let me out of here." I could see the tunnel starting to fall away too. Soon the ground beneath my feet would be gone. "You feckless bastard let, me, out!"

Nothing.

"Damn it," I said, realizing that this wall was the Guardian and I needed to tell it my name or I'd fall into the creeping oblivion below. "Efweth," I said as quietly as my adrenaline would allow.

I was back on the shuttle train. Samill sat jauntily across from me, legs crossed, smiling as though he could hear a distant good tune. The only evidence I had that anything had happened was that I was covered in dirt.

"I'm going to KILL you," I shouted and ran over and started battering him with my fists. "Kill you. There was no emerald."

He restrained me easily, smiling. "I know. I needed her killed. I knew you could do it."

My jaw fell open. "Why? Why didn't you just kill her yourself?"

"This is the problem with all of you magical mortals who chose to integrate into the larger society. You missed all of your lessons. Celestial gods cannot descend into the underworld. Only humans can. I would immediately evaporate if I stepped down there."

"Why me?," I asked, crying now. "Why? It could have been anyone."

He shook his head. "No, not anyone." He sat back down the seat. "It had to be someone with your talents."

"I don't have any talents," I wept. My shoulders were shaking. "I was just trying to survive."

"And yet, most would not. Just as most children would not have survived the ordeal you went through. No, it had to be you, I'm sorry."

He stood up again and walked to the door of the train, which I realized was moving again.

"Here," he said, reaching into a pocket in his garment. "Your magic."

"No! No, please," I begged. "I don't need it. Keep it."

He smiled again, larger than before. "I need you to have it. I'm not done with you yet, Efweth."

The loudspeaker called out, "Stand clear of the closing doors, please," and he snapped his fingers in my direction, stepped out and disappeared into the crowd.

People filed into the train and I wiped the tears from my face and tucked my hair behind my ears, but people still avoided sitting next to me, covered as I was in mud and dust. I held up my left hand, cupping it around my right forefinger as though to protect it from the wind, and produced a dancing blue flame from the tip of my finger.

I couldn't stop myself from smiling

STORY NO:03

PUZZLE PIECES

Trigger warning: mention of suicide

The first time Cassie met Lin, the latter girl was wearing a fitted pink jumpsuit, layered with a baby blue bomber jacket that was patterned all over with obnoxiously adorable illustrations of pugs and rainbows. In Lin's long black hair were citrus orange streaks that glowed stupendously whenever she and her high pigtails moved ever so slightly.

Cassie hated her.

Partially because she felt that she, being Marcus's new girlfriend, simply had to; but mostly because she knew that anyone looking at the two of them would like Lin better, and she wouldn't be able to blame them. So she would hate her instead in a silent act of protest against this inevitable fate.

Cassie knew that it wasn't fair, but Lin just occupied too many slots in Marcus's life. Childhood friend. First Love. Ex. And current best friend.

And not only that, Lin was also his neighbor; her bedroom window aligning with his in the cul-de-sac that selfishly cornered them in a little world of their own.

She was his bandmate too, her on the trombone and him on the clarinet. Their band coach jumped on any chance to duet them; and after attending just one rehearsal, Cassie could see why.

Her and Marcus partook in Model UN together on Thursdays; while Cassie, a nihilist without a real real grasp on Nihilism, was still going around gabbing about how all humans were inherently rotten and all one can do was just hope that total extinction would come sooner rather than later.

To top it all off, Lin and Marcus's parents were also very close friends, something about meeting at an archeology seminar in Greece before realizing that they had been neighbors back in Maine for eight years now.

This meant joined camping trips where the starry sky could make lovers out of anyone, frequent dinners where Lin and Marcus could no doubt bond over the lame jokes their parents made after just one glass of wine, and it meant extended funeral invitations where it would be more than appropriate for either one of them to reach out for the other's hand.

The biggest insult was that Lin didn't have to beg for any of these slots that she occupied in Marcus's life; whereas Cassie had to strategically bump into him in the school hallways seven times before he would finally say, "Hey, isn't your name Clarissa? I think we have History together."

And she would retort, "How can we have history together if you don't even know my name?" She would then chuckle; in a manner both self-conscious and flirty, a balance which she knew she struck well. And then she would smile, showing off her asymmetrical dimples; and she would extend her hand and say, "I'm Cassie, and you are?"

He would ask her out fourteen days later, and on their third date he would admit that he had spent nine of these days strategizing with Lin about the perfect method of asking Cassie out; only to settle on simply biking to her house with an extra helmet and inviting her for a waffles brunch at Eve's Diner.

They would date for two years before she would have to attend his funeral.

Before she would find herself wondering why her arm was around Lin's shoulder, why Lin's head was on hers, why they seemed to fit like puzzle pieces that way, and why it somehow made perfect sense that Lin had chosen Cassie's arms over her parents' restlessly inviting ones.

They spent senior year intertwined.

Lin, who had previously been fairly loved and popular became aloof after receiving that call at 2 in the afternoon that informed her that Marcus had passed away in an apparent suicide, and that he had left no note behind; but instead of withdrawing into herself, Lin withdrew into Cassie.

Lin would wait for the other girl outside of her classes after having memorized her schedule with no discernable effort. She would show up to school wearing some of Cassie's band shirts because she had spent the previous night curled up on Cassie's bed, who had graciously offered to sleep on the floor but still elevated her hand to be within Lin's reach. And the few lunches Lin did eat, she ate with Cassie, outside of the cafeteria, on that one abandoned bench that the graduating class of stoners used to reign over.

Everyone who cared enough to observe the two -after that customary two-week period of gossip and fixation on Marcus's death and those it affected had passed- would be completely perplexed by the nature of this sudden bond between Cassie and Lin.

Mostly because the two girls rarely talked to each other, despite spending so much time together, despite Cassie acting like her sole purpose on earth was to protect Lin at all costs, and despite Lin seeming to have molded herself so seamlessly into Cassie.

They didn't seem like friends and they definitely weren't lovers, if anything, they gave off the aura of two estranged siblings coming together at Thanksgiving just for everyone else's sake.

Lin chose to go to a university near home, she told everyone that it was because her father and mother didn't want to part with their only child just yet, but when Cassie prodded her about it, Lin said it was because she wasn't ready to leave Marcus behind yet. And after that, they again fell into their padded silence.

Cassie chose to take a gap year and work with her dad at his motorbike repair shop; and despite being in the prime location Lin wanted to be in -the very town in which Marcus breathed, walked, and bled- Cassie found ways of completely blotting out his memory from the various scenes around her.

She wouldn't think of him awkwardly reaching for her hand and her wiping hers off of the ketchup that stained it, before giving it to him to hold in Eve's Diner, instead she would urge herself to think only about that time she watched a nervous kid vomit her strawberry smoothie on the town mayor's shoes inside the retro-themed diner.

She wouldn't think about him kissing her for the first time at the drive-in theater and how that initial contact, tentative and sweet, had reaffirmed what she already knew, that she was already madly and irrevocably in love with him; instead, whenever Cassie would walk by that plot, she would opt to think about the jerk who had asked her out to watch Night of the Living Dead there in the 9th grade after stealing his cousin's car, just to try and feel her up on the cracked leather seats, four minutes into the movie.

She would remember kneeing him in the balls and she would, at least, feel a little jolt of pleasure at that.

Moreover, Cassie refused to think of Marcus in her room; with his head on top of her ribcage and his falling tears failing to puncture her skin but still leaving an imprint there, both over her heart and deep inside it.

She wouldn't think of him talking about the black beast cornering him inside his own head, how he felt the beast was conspiring to push him out of himself entirely. She wouldn't think of her heart beating ferociously in these moments as if it belonged to a much larger animal, as if it could pretend that it did, as she wrapped all her limbs around him just to pin him down to the love he still had on the ground.

Cassie didn't think of him in her room, it was imperative that she didn't. She didn't think of him in her room but her pillow sheets did, even after several, violent washes; her sheets remembered him well; almost as if to spite her.

Cassie slept on the floor while her sheets fumed clouds of vanilla-scented fabric softener and musk.

It was 2 am when Lin called Cassie asking her if she could drive up to her college dorm. Cassie was in the throes of the first deep sleep she had gotten in months, but without a second's beat she said, "Yes, of course, I'll be there."

She found Lin sitting cross-legged in the parking lot in front of her dorm. Lin was covered from head to toe in layers of monochromatic gray, but at least her hair was again in those high pigtails, lopsided and un-streaked, but Cassie still took it as a good sign.

Lin lifted her hand in a small salute, and Cassie mirrored her. They didn't embrace and they didn't have to. They both thawed upon simply seeing each other.

They drove in silence. Lin had given Cassie the location to what she called "the best spot in this crowded purgatory" and when they got there, Cassie understood why.

They stopped at a quiet hill that overlooked the town's landscape, now comfortably darkened by the late night, with just a few lights that still flickered on here and there.

They laid on top of the front hood of the car, still blanketed by silence. Lin's sandals rhythmically tapped Cassie's Vans as she shook her feet back and forth like an anxious pendulum.

A long time trickled by before Lin finally interrupted it. "Thank you." She said.

"Don't mention it." Cassie replied.

"You don't even know what I'm thanking you for!" Lin said in the highest, most animated pitch Cassie had heard her use in years.

Under different circumstances, Cassie might've smiled. "I think I might know why."

"Still," Lin began, dropping down an octave or two. "I think I want to say it."

Cassie closed her eyes and waited.

"Being around you has been like being around him, in a way. And I really needed that, because all the time that I had counted on having with him was cut off." Lin's voice shook but she pushed through. "I could never tell you this back then, because I worried that you might misunderstand, but I thought I would spend the rest of my life with him."

I would have misunderstood, Cassie thought, I misunderstood so much back then.

Instead, she said, "I know." Her own voice was shaking now.

"You know…he didn't once tell me what he was going through. And since he passed all I've been asking myself is 'why?' and believe me I came up with a lot of reasons why. Like, maybe I was too bubbly. Too smiley. Too preoccupied. Too...too fucking bright, all the damn time; and for what? Why was I-"

"Lin," Cassie grasped Lin's wrist, and the other girl broke down, almost instantaneously. "It's not your fault. It's not on you, what happened. It's not on anyone, despite how awful it is, there's unfortunately no one to blame for it."

Their fingers intertwined with no conscious effort, and they curled up again into the silence that has become so safe and familiar to them.

"You know, I was always a little bit jealous of you, Cass." Lin said, moments later, through quieter sobs.

Cassie noted that she wasn't as bothered as she thought she might be with Lin's use of Marcus's nickname for her. Even though it reminded her of Marcus saying it a thousand times, in a thousand of different tones, across a thousand memories that now all filtered across her mind's eye like an unsolicited View-Master.

She realized that she felt safer remembering Marcus with Lin than with the sheets in her room. And that realization propelled her into another, and then another.

She became aware of the fact that ever since the funeral, she hadn't once talked about Marcus with anyone else besides Lin. And she realized that while she had blocked out all possible reminders of him, she couldn't seem to block out the largest, living reminder. She couldn't block Lin out of her life.

And with the abruptness of an ocean wave, Cassie became hyper-cognizant of the fact that she could no longer envision her life without Lin in it. And she didn't want to either.

"I was a lot bit jealous of you, Lin" She said.

Lin laughed. And following suit, a hearty laughter bubbled out of Cassie, surprising them both, and triggering even more laughter. By the time the sound of their laughter had abated, giving way the sounds of crickets chirping in the distance again, both girls were in tears; and their intertwined arms were now interlocked at the elbows too.

Lin rested her head on Cassie's shoulder, and it all clicked neatly into place, like the last two puzzle pieces in a difficult set; and like it did a year and a half ago on the saddest day of both of their lives.

Cassie gazed at the dead stars blazing on overhead, she felt her heartbeat synchronizing with Lin's, and she wondered if Marcus could have somehow known that when he would leave them he would be leaving them safe in each other's company

Author hasnain Haider

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