The past and present slip into one other. They mirror each other so closely (there I was writing about Tyler leaving, and then Tyler leaves again), but everything is so painfully, starkly different. Like holding up a piece of colored glass, shading everything bright and warm, and then dropping my hand, the black and white remaining.

Tyler leaves, and I see Clair. Tyler leaves, and I am alone. Back at school and alone.

He'd left home before me because he needed to catch a flight. Dad had asked if I wanted to see him off, but the drive back without him would've been... hard, so I didn't. (That's not right, though. I would've cried, and I'm so tired of crying. I'm tired of thinking I'm empty, only to have something else taken from me.)

And that goodbye: almost mimicking the past, but its own beast entirely. This time, a proper Minnesota goodbye, where Tyler said the words several times but lingered just inside the door, tugged back time and time again. Mom offering him food for the ride or Dad needing his wallet and conversation floating on and on and on, until it truly was time for Tyler to leave unless he wanted to miss his flight back.

"I don't want to go back." The words were muffled by his shirt, by the way my face was pressed close to his chest. My arms clawing around his neck like he was a life raft, but he didn't complain.

"I know, kiddo," Tyler said, "but you don't want to stay here, either." He untangled himself from my grasp and tugged the end of my ponytail, just a little. "Call me, okay? I never sleep either, so it's not like you'll be waking me up."

(He didn't say the word, but it's there. Anytime. Call me anytime.)

I pecked his cheek, and he recoiled. "Ugh, sister germs." Tyler winked, hefting his bag and jerking his chin towards the door, a signal to leave. So Dad clapped me on the shoulder and trailed behind Tyler, their words knifing through the winter air.

It's only a few days later that Dad drives me back to The Cities, and I try to hang onto that drive, to clutch it close to my heart. But long goodbyes only stave off the loneliness so long (Dad ruffles my hair, and sunlight skitters off his wedding-band. A quick wave, and I am abandoned on the front steps of the building, left to enter it by myself.)

As soon as he's gone, I sort of collapse in on myself. I was alone-and-not-alone for a month, and now that I'm truly alone, dread creeps under the door, slinking like shadow and crouching in the corners of my eyes. And the world whispers beyond my door, mocking me. I can't even bring myself to go out to meet it.

Before, the world didn't matter. I held stars in the palm of my hand, so what was the point of the world? Clair was the world, but now I've been thrust back into it, ill-fitting and ill-prepared.

I feel so small back in my apartment. Lacy isn't here yet, and the bedroom feels cavernous, like it could swallow me whole. The windowpanes like tombstone teeth, bared and—

So I drive myself to distraction, yanking apart all my bags, letting clothes and presents and everything tumble onto the floor. Mom gave me a ton of study supplies for Christmas (a planner with cheerful stickers, highlighters and sticky flags to mark up my textbooks, glossy notebooks), and it's not until these slide across the floor that a Post-it flutters out.

  M.,

Take me with on your first day of class :)

Love, Mom

It's a stupid, little note, the kind mom's put in their kids' lunch boxes. The kind they're supposed to give kindergarteners. Not like some great work of literature about how much she loved me and everything was going to be okay and empty promises and all those words that are so pointless and don't bring her back and don't patch me up and don't right the— just one little note.

But hell if that little Post-it doesn't make me cry. I almost almost call her.

And I almost almost call Tyler.

But. My hand flies up to my mouth to stifle the scream that claws up my throat. And then my palms press against my face, push down on my eyes which are clenched shut and the scream comes out and I decompose because she left me a fucking note and snot trails from my nose and I don't care and I can't even talk because my throat is so raw from crying and my nails dig into my scalp and I yank at my hair and everything in me hurts.

Shuddering breaths. Gasping gasping gasping. And it goes that way, until my heart beats slow, until I am calm as the sea, until the storm sweeps away, and I pack everything in my backpack for class, and I tape the note in the front cover of my planner.

I can't decide if that's a good idea or not.