I stop by a late-night ice cream shop on my way home again. It's cold, but I love ice cream too much to care, and this is a treat for myself. The evening was a success. And that's saying a lot, because Ophelia was there.

Ophelia Regina Sinclair is the hottest girl in our year, maybe even the university. Or so I've been told. I've never really understood what makes someone "hot" as opposed to pretty, and while Ophelia is definitely the latter, I don't gush over her the way everyone else seems to. I sometimes wonder if I should. I've managed to convince all the people in the board-game group that I have a crush on her, at least. And that works to my advantage, because they're all too scared to tell her, but not too scared to leave me alone with her at opportune moments that they all seem to agree on without saying a word.

And that works for me because Ophelia is the most normal popular girl you'll ever meet, and that's why I picked her. She's everything I'm not: the kind of face you see in the lead roles of movies, the kind of mannered that makes you feel like a peasant beside her, the kind of social that's always chatting up a group at the center of a party. It also means she has standards. Higher standards than Hayden, my alternative: he's too kind to hopefuls, and strings them along with no intention of dating them. Ophelia is harsher than that. If she discards you, you're done, and she won't take chasing from anyone who tries otherwise.

That's my challenge for myself: my little game. Or maybe not so much a game as a marker of success. If I can land a date with Ophelia, I'll have succeeded at...

At something. It's been so long now that I don't remember what, exactly, the original rules were. I don't even remember starting. Not that that's saying much... my memories of anything past a year are always hazy, like the "me" of back then was someone else, and I just inherited their body. Whenever I think I'm not changing, I look back. The shock of it always resets that assumption.

I do remember checking that Ophelia had a rainbow on her bag, and that the pin I found it on didn't say "ally." It still annoys me that I'm supposed to pay attention to these things. All humans are just humans. I'm not a girl, woman, lady. I never have been. But I'm not anything else, either, and letting people assume is easier than describing that, so I don't even bother to find words. I exist, and that's all I care about.

Ophelia actually spoke to me today. A whole conversation, and I held eye contact more than she did. Which is probably a sign that she was uncomfortable, but she didn't cut us off or ever fully turn away. I was the one who ended it, when our food arrived. I didn't want to push my luck by testing these things longer than I have stamina, or long enough that my concentration breaks and I slip up somehow. It's like another game, really. Only higher-stakes than the board on the table, because a loss is a hard loss with Ophelia, and I've been playing for a very long time. I know I'm getting better. I haven't lost yet. Tonight's success was a milestone for many things, so I'm celebrating.

I take my ice cream and wander with it, taking back roads home again. A few fragile snowflakes whirl on the wind that's sprung up, biting my cheeks and nose. The darkness between the streetlights draws me along, towards something. I already know what it is, even though a part of me protests that I shouldn't return.

I return anyway.

The whole school is dark now. Only street lights lend a glow to its coarse red brick, and the back schoolyard is a pool of grass and concrete untainted by any backwash of light from the windows. I follow the road to circle it. On its other side is a gap in the fance: a gateway without a gate, in deeper shadow than the schoolyard entrance on this side. I slip through it and follow the fence to the tree in the corner. There's so much trash around its roots. I scuff some aside and sit between them, beneath the living one of its trunks. The ground bleeds cold through my jeans. I won't stay long, but I want to stay for now.

The schoolyard is peaceful. In the warmth of my jacket and the shadow of the tree, I feel like I've found a pocket of calm from the world, even as the wind continues to rush through the branches above me, making snowflakes sting my eyes. I finish my ice cream and stuff the cup in my pocket. I keep the cardboard sleeve. It winds between my fingers of its own accord, edges coarse against my gloves, motion smooth and round and soothing. Around and around. I collapse it, open it again, and contemplate the inside. My hand won't fit while gloved, and it's cold enough that I really shouldn't be removing my winter clothing. I pull off my glove and stick my hand through the sleeve anyway. The cardboard presses against it, smooth and round and—

Bracelet.

I whip the sleeve off my wrist and pull my glove on again. It's compulsive, like a layer of fleece will protect me from the cardboard I now hold gingerly in a single hand. I collapse it again. Then I set it down and rub my wrist.

I used to wear a bracelet. That's what's missing: the sensation I can't quite find when I stim like this. It was a length of chain: silver and delicate-looking, made of many interlocking rings. I wore it constantly. I'm almost certain. Day and night, until the silver polish wore away and left copper in its wake. It looked patchy for a few years. Then I took sandpaper to it and scrubbed away the remainder of the silver.

I lost it here, I'm almost certain. In one of the later grades. Seven or eight. I can't remember. I can't remember when I last had it on me, either: just older fragments of memories where I'm wearing it, fiddling with it, spinning it around my wrist, or picking at the silver, and then... then what? It was my constant companion, and then it was gone. I vaguely remember a feeling like waking up and finding it missing, but that could also be from a dream. They overlap sometimes.

I shiver as the wind blows through. The schoolyard isn't peaceful anymore, and I'm chilled to the bone even though I've only been here a minute or two. I stuff the cardboard sleeve in my pocket and push myself up again. I nearly run as I reach the gate, but there's nothing chasing me when I look over my shoulder. Only the schoolyard, dark and empty, and the half-living, half-dead tree I left behind.

Maybe I just misplaced the bracelet. I can remember a few places I used to leave it if I absolutely had to take it off. A pocket of an older backpack that I still have in my closet somewhere. The shelf beside my bed. I also have a jewelry box of necklaces I never wear. I suddenly need to find the bracelet. I want it on again. Now that I know what I'm looking for when I rub that wrist involuntarily, its absence is almost unbearable.

I arrive home much faster than a normal walking pace, but I no longer care. It's almost midnight, and there's nobody on the streets to judge me anyway. I shed my winter clothing in the entryway, annoyed that I need to hang things up and put them away. I leave my gloves on the counter. Try not to look at the kitchen sink. There's clean laundry on the table that's been there for more than a week now, too overwhelming to fold and put away. I scoop it up and drop it on my bed instead, return to the living room, and put my face in my hands as I find a dry cloth on the couch, my reminder that the bathroom needs cleaning. I don't want chores. I want my bracelet.

I throw the cloth on the table, but that's not far enough out of sight, so I take it to the bathroom and drop it in the sink instead. I can put it back on the couch later. Then I return to my bedroom, close the curtains, and begin to search.

At the end of an hour and a half, I've turned my wardrobe inside out, dismantled and reassembled half my bookshelf, scoured the kitchen, bathroom, and odd places like my hygiene bag, and turned up nothing. It's not in my keepsake box. It's not in any of the places I remember leaving it before. Half of those don't transfer to the new apartment anyway, and I don't remember seeing the bracelet when moving.

I sink down on the coach and bite back tears as another bit of clutter crowds my vision: the bedside table from this morning. It's still sitting in the middle of the entryway floor.

That's enough of a distraction. And, really, there's an irrational part of me that believes in fairytales and thinks I'll open that drawer and find a long-lost cache of possessions from when my parents still lived together, and I still lived with them. Also, there's nobody to watch me here. I fetch a utility knife and drag the bedside table to the living room, where I can sit on the couch to open it. The tape puts up a fight, but it's no match for the energy of my overstimulation, and soon gives way. The drawer groans as I crack it open.

Notebooks. There are notebooks inside.

I pull the drawer open all the way. Then I pull them out: four of them, all different colours, sizes, styles. I search the rest of the drawer. It's empty, and disappointment crushes the fairytale. I gingerly open the first notebook for another distraction. Its spine crackles with age.

There are dates on the inside cover. From March one year to January the next, eight years ago. There's no name or contact information. I don't recognize the handwriting, either; these are neither mine nor my mom or dad's, and if they belonged to my little brother before he took off across the country, he wrote them with his left hand. He did like to say he was ambidextrous. I check the other notebooks and find that their dates align sequentially: whoever filled these wrote for a total of four years, though the last notebook spans more than half that timeframe. The oldest dates back a decade. I return to it, and this time turn to the first page.