THE EDGE OF THE MAP
(After 11 months has passed)
The fluorescent hum of the 24-hour diner was the only thing keeping Fay from the abyss. Outside, the world was moving on the school bells were still ringing, lockers were slamming, and the hallways were filled with the mindless chatter of seniors planning for a prom that Kei would never attend. But inside this vinyl booth, time had frozen eleven months ago. It was still the day the bank's yellow tape had been stretched across Kei's front door like a crime scene, marking the spot where their childhood ended.
Fay's laptop was a graveyard of dead ends. Her hair, once a vibrant crown of curls that Kei used to braid during study hall, was now a tangled, neglected mess. She looked hollowed out, the "Sun" that Kei used to gravitate toward now eclipsed by a frantic, starving obsession.
"She's still in the city. I can feel it," Fay whispered, her voice a dry, papery rasp. She was tracing the image of an old neighborhood map with a trembling finger. "The bank took the house, but they didn't take her heart. Her books... they didn't go to the landfill. She loved that copy of The Secret Garden more than anything. If I find where they moved her things, I find her."
"Fay. Please. Look at me."
Len and Angel sat across from her, looking like mourners at a funeral that had gone on for a year. They were still wearing their school blazers, the gold embroidery of the school crest mocking the grime of the diner. Angel was cradling her coffee as if it were the only warm thing left in the world, her eyes red-rimmed and exhausted. Len was vibrating with a different kind of pain a jagged, explosive helplessness.
"I've been tracking the estate auctions," Fay continued, her eyes wide and bloodshot, fixed on the screen. "If her mom's piano shows up, it means they've moved to a smaller place. A basement. An attic. I just need to call the district warehouses one more time"
"Fay, she's gone!" Angel's voice broke, a jagged sob escaping her throat. "The house is repainted, Fay! There's a new family there. I walked past it yesterday there are toys on the lawn. Kei is gone. She's not coming back to class. She's not going to be at graduation. She left us in the dirt without a word!"
"She didn't leave us, she was evicted!" Fay hissed, her hands shaking so hard she had to grip the edge of the table. "You don't just stop loving someone because they lost their bedroom! I'm the only one left who remembers the way she looked that last day. If I stop looking, it's like she never existed. Is that what you want? To just forget her because the homework is getting hard?"
Len stood up so abruptly her chair screeched like a wounded animal. "Look at yourself, Fay! You're a ghost! You're failing your senior year, you don't eat, you smell like old coffee and desperation! You're destroying your life for a girl who didn't even trust us enough to tell us where she was sleeping!"
"I am this close," Fay screamed, her voice cracking as she shoved her laptop toward them. She pointed at a blurry, grainy photo she'd taken months ago a distant figure in a grey uniform standing by a massive gate in the high-rent district. "Look at her! Look at the way she stands! That's her grief! I know the shape of her shoulders when she's crying! That's my friend!"
"That's a stranger, Fay!" Len's voice was a roar of pure, unadulterated agony. "That is a shadow! You are hallucinating a soul into a pile of pixels because you can't face the fact that she walked away and left us behind! She's not a ghost, Fay she's just someone who doesn't want to be found!"
"You're a coward!" Fay wailed, the word tearing out of her chest. "You're both cowards! You never loved her! You're just waiting for the school year to end so you can stop feeling guilty for being happy! I'm the only one who stayed! I'm the only one"
CRACK.
The sound was sickeningly loud, a sharp report that seemed to shatter the very air in the diner.
Fay's head snapped to the side. The stinging heat on her left cheek was a violent, physical explosion. Her glasses flew from her face, clattering onto the linoleum floor.
Silence rushed in, heavy and suffocating.
Len stood over her, her hand still raised, her chest heaving with ragged, broken gasps. She wasn't angry anymore. She looked like he had just committed a murder. Tears were streaming down her face, dripping onto his school tie.
"Come back," Len whispered, her voice a pathetic, broken plea. "Fay, please... come back to us. You're killing yourself. I can't lose both of you. I can't."
Fay didn't move. She sat there, the left side of her face blooming with a fierce, throbbing heat. She looked down at the floor, where her glasses lay crooked and pathetic near the leg of the table. For the first time in nearly a year, the manic fire in her brain flickered and died, leaving nothing but cold, grey ash.
She realized then that she didn't know who lived in that house with the big gates. She didn't know the name Vance, or that Sofia Vance was currently watching Kei scrub her floors. She only knew the sting on her cheek and the hollow, echoing realization that she was standing on the edge of a map, and her friend had been erased from the world.
She reached up, touching her burning skin, and finally, a sound escaped her a low, animalistic whimper of pure, unvarnished grief. She wasn't crying for the house. She wasn't even crying for Kei. She was crying because she was finally, terrifyingly, alone.