Junebug

“June?”

I don’t know if that’s the first or hundredth time Norah said my name. Judging by the quick, worried glances she casts my way before returning her eyes to the road, I’d say it’s somewhere in-between.

“You okay?” she asks.

“I’m okay,” I say. “Other than …”

“Yeah.” She puffs up her cheeks then exhales in a short, hard burst, her fingers tightening on the steering wheel. “Other than.”

This is what the conversation has been like the whole drive. One of us—me, Norah, or Connor—will say, “How’s it going?” to one of the others, and the response would be, “Okay” or, if we’re especially on the verge of falling apart in that exact moment, it’ll be the classic Midwestern distress call of, “It’s going!”

Our real emotions came out in text form, usually late at night or while drunk. The group chat was a haven for sudden outpourings of anxiety and grief and anger and impostor syndrome and utter certainty that everyone who ever lived hated us, for sure.

In text form, or in memes. There was no emotion or event so intense that it couldn’t be conveyed by meme. Annalise proved that last week.

She used a common meme format for our group. It was the same one I used to announce I’d been laid off and that Connor used to tell us he’d moved back in with his parents. It’s a three-panel comic strip featuring a bear in a sweater. The first panel always stays the same—the bear walks into a room and says, “Hey guys! Guess who just got …”

The last two panels are where the customization comes in. The bear sways back and forth with musical notes around their next words. I used a straightforward “laid off” while Connor leaned into the complexity of his issue, adding the text in font so tiny we had to zoom in to read it: “an eviction notice after his roommates moved out and his landlord sold the building and now he’s back in his childhood bedroom.”

Annalise’s latest version of the meme had the bear cheerily announcing, “Hey guys! Guess who just got terminal illness.”

I can imagine her in a doctor’s office, maybe the kind with the big beautiful desks, like the rooms where TV characters are always given tragic medical news. She sits across from the oncologist, and he’s telling her how little time she has left, and she’s hearing him but not listening. She’s already constructing the meme in her mind. The doctor is working his way towards the word hospice, but Annalise is trying to decide if she should go for one of our usual formats or something new.

She sent the bear meme, and I stared at my phone, uncomprehending, for at least five minutes. I received it while trying to set up raised garden beds in my backyard. After being laid off, I convinced myself that growing food was my new calling. Starting in July was apparently a little late, but I was already determined, so, there I was, kneeling in the dirt by a half-completed garden bed where I was going to grow some goddamn tomatoes, goddammit, and then the meme.

In what I can only describe as an out of body experience, I took off one gardening glove and held my thumb down on Annalise’s message until the option for emoji reactions popped up. I picked a skull—my usual reaction to something funny or uncanny or, well, this kind of meme. Then I registered the words terminal illness and turned it into a purple heart emoji instead. Then I thought, “Is she going to think I’m already tiptoeing around her?” and changed it back to a skull. Then I realized that no matter how I reacted, the notification was going to show up with my goofy group chat nickname and there was no reaction emoji I could select that would outweigh the text on her phone saying “I am married to the mice king reacted to …”

Then I threw my phone several feet across the yard and laid down on my back in the torn up grass, wearing one gardening glove, and stared at the hatefully blue sky until the sun moved in front of my eyes and I had to close them.

I shake myself from the memory enough to ask Norah, “What about you?” I’m entirely open to her responding genuinely, I really am. If this is the moment that any one of us was prepared to Talk About Our Feelings, I’ll be there for her or Connor without hesitation.

It isn’t the moment, though. Norah nods, her tight black curls bouncing, and says, “Yeah, fine. Getting through.”

Silence settles back into the car, except, not silence, because Norah’s streaming music, and the AC’s on full blast, and there’s that highway hum. But it feels like silence until Connor asks, “How much longer?”

As the shotgun seat navigator, I dutifully check Google Maps on my phone. “A little less than three hours.” We’re making good time. When I originally mapped it, our drive from central-ish Indiana to a hospice in eastern Ohio was looking to take almost six hours, and instead it may be closer to five.

An extra hour with Annalise.

She isn’t going to die before we get there. Her doctor—or maybe it’s the people at hospice now? I never asked how it worked, if she kept her doctor when she moved from treatment to death care—thinks she has another month, at least. So she definitely has another three hours.

Except not definitely. There’s no definitely. She’s going to die, and soon, and it could be in ten minutes.

Or it could be a month. Compared to an hour, a month feels unending, luxurious. But it’s already almost August, and where the fuck has July gone? Where has the whole first half of the year gone? That’s how it happens, right? Every single month feels infinite on the first day, and then it speeds by faster than a heartbeat.

How the fuck are people not constantly running through the streets and screaming at the abject horror of our imminent and entirely unpredictable deaths? There’s no amount of time on Earth that could ever be enough time, and we just … accept that?

That’s when the traffic slows. We and the rest of the cars dipped below highway speeds, then to a crawl, and finally to a full stop.

It’s like the universe knew I was in an existential panic. Slow down, it’s saying. Shut the FUCK up and get me to Annalise, I want to scream back at it. This isn’t the time for lessons from the fucking universe.

“I’m sure we’ll be out of this in a minute,” Norah says.

Glancing across the divider, I see that the other side of the highway isn’t stopped—it’s empty.

That’s probably fine.

“Could we get the music back?” Connor asks after a few minutes. I’m confused at first, because none of us stopped it. But he’s right—it isn’t playing. The song information isn’t displaying on the dash, either.

Norah shakes herself out of whatever reverie she’d fallen into. “Uh, yeah, sorry, the app must have crashed.” She grabs her phone and prepares to re-open Spotify, then pauses. “No, it’s still open, it’s … Let me restart it.” She taps and swipes, then swipes some more. The music continues to not play.

“Problems?” I ask.

“It’s lagging,” Norah says. “Or not working. Is yours? My connection gets shitty sometimes.”

I open Spotify to check, except it won’t open—not all the way. Tapping the app’s icon only brings up a dark screen. I close and re-open it several times, with the same result.

“Nothing is working,” Connor says. “I have zero bars. Not even Bluetooth.”

“Same,” I murmur. Every internet-reliant app I open brings me to a loading screen.

“June, did my text come through?” Norah asks.

“Huh?”

“I sent a text to, you know, test it,” she says. “I'm guessing it hasn't.”

No notification popped up but, just in case, I open my messages. “Sure has not.”

“Norah, I'm going to call you,” Connor says. Then, a beat later, “Or not. It's stuck on dialing.”

Norah doesn't seem to be listening. She’s moved on to fiddling with the radio with one hand and swiping around her phone with the other. I realize, as Norah already has, that every station is playing static.

“I hate this,” Norah declares. “All in favor of hating this?”

“Seconded,” I say.

“Aye,” Connor says.

Norah sighs. “Motion passes.” She leans back heavily against her seat. “Any sign of movement up ahead?”

I roll down my window and lean out to check. Other than a few people doing the same thing, all is still.

“Solid no. And they blocked off traffic somewhere on the other side, too,” I point out.

None of us have to state the obvious—we’re going to be stuck here for a while. Norah turns off the engine. Her car’s a weird mix of new and old. Bluetooth streaming, but no power windows, so I crank my window back up in a vain attempt to extend those sweet air-conditioned temperatures. It won't last long. It’s a bright day, near 90 degrees.

Now the silence is real. No music, no road hum or AC. It’s unbearable. I want music or a podcast or something, but all we have is streaming and radio and both are failing us.

I’m the first to break the silence, and I don't even mean to. The words tumble out of my mouth. This happens when I’m anxious or overstimulated or understimulated or just, like, existing.

“I miss CDs,” I say. I don't bother to explain the train of thought, even as I catch up with it myself. It's too quiet, streaming music isn't working, this wouldn't be a problem if we still had physical media, why don't we have that anymore? And under that, another meaning. I miss having a binder of music that felt like it could reveal my inner soul to everyone who looked, I miss pouring my heart into mix CDs and the way the Sharpie would glide over the holographic surface, I miss being small enough for my parents to carry me to my room when I fell asleep to their music in the car. Isn’t that what all 90s kids nostalgia actually is? We don't really miss cold pizza Lunchables, we miss not having to know the cost of groceries because someone else is handling all that.

And maybe also the Lunchables.

“I miss cassettes,” Norah says. “The anti-skipping tech on CD players was a lie. My Walkman never skipped.”

It’s getting stuffy in the car. I roll down my window. Connor and Norah are talking, but I can’t register the words. It’s not important, or at least, I don’t think so. Time-passing conversation. Because all we have is time to pass.

I try to open the group chat, thinking we need to tell Annalise we’ll be late, but of course it doesn’t open. Just a blank screen and a little spinning wheel. I can’t even see past messages, much less send a new one.

It hits me, all at once, that when Annalise is gone I’ll never again see three little photos of my friends under a message indicating they’ve read it. It’ll be two, forever, or for as long as Facebook messenger lasts. I’ll never get another notification from several fresno nightcrawlers in a trench coat or sipping that Hayterade or Helen or any of the dozen other nicknames Annalise gives herself in the chat. It’s currently set to absolutely definitely June, though I can’t remember which inside joke inspired that. Is she going to die being absolutely definitely me?

Ten minutes at a total standstill, then twenty, then thirty. I want to hit and kick the dashboard, I want to scream, I want to thrash like a toddler, because we were going to be early! We were going to have a whole extra fucking hour with her, and now who knows when we’ll make it? If we’ll make it? God I could tear off my own face—

The screaming in my brain is so loud that I can’t fathom Norah and Connor not hearing it, but they don’t react. I see my face reflected in the black surface of my phone, and it’s … blank. As if I’m feeling nothing at all. As if I’m bored.

I place a hand over my window-side arm, and find the skin to be the too-hot that warns of sunburns yet to come. A couple cars ahead, someone climbs out of the backseat. There’s a few other people mingling in the road. Is that allowed? Is that something we can just do when the traffic is stopped this long? Forty minutes, now, or more. Sixty? What time was it when we stopped? I can’t remember now.

I can’t breathe and on impulse I say, “I’m going to go see if anyone knows what’s going on.” I get out without waiting for a response.

The humidity levels are at “shitty” but not “punishing,” so I can inhale without feeling like I’m drowning. It’s the humidity that gets you, I think, having long since accepted my transformation into a Midwestern adult.

“Fuckin’ nothing,” a young woman wearing Uggs—Uggs! In this heat! In the year of our Lord 2023!—is saying as I reach the group. “My boyfriend has this radio that's supposed to, like, still work after a nuclear apocalypse or something. But it's not working now.”

Is that a thing? Who would even be broadcasting after a nuclear apocalypse?

“Must not be a nuclear apocalypse then,” a woman about my age says. She has long blue and purple hair that makes me ache with envy. My job never allowed anything quite that vivid and intense.

Annalise would say, “Yeah, and your job laid you off, so fuck ‘em. Go rainbow. Plus, you might as well have pretty hair while sending out hundreds of resumes.”

“Any idea what it is?” I ask. The others in the group give me quick glances to size me up, but apparently find nothing objectionable. Haha, yes, still got it. The longer I’ve gone without a job or a reason to be around other (non-friend group) humans, the more I’ve lost my ability to pretend like I know how to talk to people. Getting through a single short sentence without them immediately seeing through the mask feels like a huge success.

“Darryl—that's my boyfriend,” the Ugg girl says, indicating a nearby blue SUV where a young man slouches in the front seat. “He said EMP.”

“Cars wouldn't work if it was an EMP,” a guy in aviator sunglasses says. I don’t know if that’s true, but he says it with an awful lot of confidence. Man, what’s the point of all the post-apocalypse media I consume if I don't even know whether or not EMPs affected cars?

“Also, phones work,” I point out. If nothing else, I know those would get fried with an EMP. “Or they turn on, anyway. It's just the signal.”

“I think it's probably an EMP,” Ugg Girl says, but she sounds doubtful now. “Darryl—” She pauses, looking off to something on the side of the road. We all follow her line of sight but there’s nothing.

“Sorry,” Ugg Girl says in a distant sort of voice. “I thought I saw …” She shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, Darryl says it’s an EMP, and he knows all about this stuff.”

“It's as good a guess as any,” I reassured her, even though I’m pretty sure it was actually a bad guess and probably she should dump Darryl. It makes her smile, though, so I don't regret saying it.

“It's probably some kind of weird interference,” Aviator Guy says.

“Aliens,” I whispered dramatically. He frowns. “Kidding, of course.”

“Storms can cause electrical interference, can't they?” the blue-haired woman asks. “Could this be a really weird electrical storm in … I don't know, the upper atmosphere? So we don't see lightning but we get the interference?” She sighs, running a hand over her face. “Y'all, I'll be honest, I don't even know if that's a thing. It made sense before I said it.”

“We should wait it out,” Aviator guy declares. “If it's atmospheric or if it's …” He gestures vaguely at me. “... aliens, either way, we can't fix it. All we can do is wait for it to pass.” I frown. He got it was a joke, right?

Ugg Girl and the blue-haired woman nod in agreement, but they’ve lost me. There has to be something we can do.

I wander away as Ugg Girl launches into Darryl’s credentials, as if knowing how to code automatically makes a person qualified to identify secret government EMPs. I’m not ready to go back to the car and sit still and wait as more hours without Annalise tick past, but I also can't just stand around and theorize.

Something’s placed on my head, shading my face. I turn around and find Connor.

“I was sent to deliver that,” he says, indicating the sun hat he put on me. He adjusts it until it sits properly. “Oh yeah, and this.” He wiggles a can of spray-on sunscreen. “In Norah’s words, everyone needs sunscreen, but especially her pale ass.”

I peer over his shoulder. There are still cars between me and Norah, but I can see her watching through the windshield. I obediently hold out my arms so Connor can spray them. It’s too late for the arm that was closest to the window—that one’s going to burn no matter what—but yeah, sure, I’ll try to save the rest.

“Anyone have any idea what’s going on?” Connor asks as he sprays. The mist provides brief cooling, but leaves my skin oil-slick shiny.

“Nope,” I say. “Maybe it’s some weird new emergency services protocol, like, cell phone jammers so people stop flooding 911 after an accident?”

“Sounds wildly reckless, which also makes it sound like a policy that would totally happen.”

“Compared to the other theories, which are mostly like, government conspiracy EMPs or something—”

“Junebug,” a voice whispers, and I freeze.

“Did you hear that?” I ask.

“Huh?” Connor says.

“Someone said … are you okay?” His gaze is fixed on the side of the road. There’s nothing there, but his face is pale.

“Yeah, I thought I saw …” He shakes his head. “Nothing.”

I peer at him, and decide to sound crazy. “I thought I heard Annalise,” I tell him. “I thought I heard her say ‘Junebug.’” Connor knows the nickname, and also knows that the absolute only people who ever use it are Annalise and my dad. My dad’s in Florida, and Annalise …

“Shit. I thought I saw her,” he says, his voice hoarse.

Several cars away, a door slams. Norah backs away from the car, shaking, then sprints to us.

“I just had the weirdest fucking thing happen,” she says.

“You heard Annalise?” I guess.

“... Saw her. In the backseat. Or, in the backseat, in the rearview mirror, like a horror movie.”

I frown as Connor says, “I saw her, too!” because why did they get to see her? Why did I only hear her?

Then Connor continues, “But does that mean …?”

I shake my head vigorously. “No. Absolutely not. She’s fine.” My phone’s in my hand and I’m pulling up the group chat to message her and prove it before I remember that, oh yeah, the whole problem was we can’t do that. We can’t do anything. “She’s fine,” I repeat.

“Other than the everything,” Norah says.

“Other than that,” I agree. “This is a hallucination or something caused by being stuck in this traffic jam for our entire lives. Or it’s a side-effect of whatever’s fucking with the signals. She’s astral projecting. I don’t know.”

“Sure,” Connor says. “A convergence of weirdness. We’re in this weirdness, she’s in …” He waves a hand around, trying to find a way to say a space between life and death without acknowledging how close she is to death. “You know. And we’re connecting.”

“Finding each other across space through the power of friendship?” Norah asks incredulously. She smiles, though, and we’re thinking the same thing: Annalise would love that. Annalise is a known sucker for any media that involves the literally magic, nearly divine power of love and friendship.

“I’m all for it if it allows us to teleport,” I say. How long have we been in this traffic? I glance at my phone, but I can’t remember when we’d stopped. I also can’t really comprehend what I’m seeing when I look at the time. The numbers swim, not quite settling. I close my eyes tightly for a moment, imagine raking my nails down my face and just tearing the whole thing off while I scream into the sky, and put my phone back in my pocket.

“It’ll be okay,” Connor says. “We’ll get there.”

“We will.” Norah bumps her hip against mine. “It’s …” She hesitates, then adds, “It’s not going to be too late.”

“You can’t know that. That’s the problem.” I stare hard at the asphalt. If I look at either of their faces, I won’t be able to keep talking. I’ll turn it into a joke. I’ll change the subject. “We can say all the reassuring things we want but we can’t know. No one can.”

It’s hard enough to tell them that much with my own human voice, and I definitely don’t repeat what the mean, selfish voice in my head keeps saying. You wouldn’t really get it. She was mine first.

It’s unfair, and I know it. Yes, I’ve known Annalise longer, but that doesn’t make all of this hurt less for Norah and Connor. They’ve been among her best friends for a decade.

I do have a full extra decade on them, because Annalise and I met when we were eleven, but that doesn’t make the grief uniquely mine. Or maybe it does? Maybe we all have our own unique grief? Fuck, I don’t know, I couldn’t afford therapy even before I got laid off. The only thing I do know is that I can’t keep thinking things like she was mine first because it makes it sound like I was on a pedestal above them in friendship-with-Annalise and I don’t actually believe that.

“You’re right,” Norah says. “We can’t know. But I’m going to say it anyway, because I believe it. This traffic jam will end, and we’ll get to Annalise, and we’ll hang out, and we’ll make Connor run one of those weird one-shot roleplaying games Annalise loves.”

“Hope so,” I whisper.

“Did I know I was getting recruited to run games?” Connor asks. Then, “I mean, I assumed, but …”

Norah rolls her eyes. “Obviously. Now let’s get back to the car. I am not hyped about potentially seeing hallucination-Annalise in the backseat again, but I’m even less hyped about traffic getting started … without us …” She falters as she turns around.

There are still dozens and dozens of cars stopped around us, as far as we can see in front and behind. Some doors are open. Most windows are rolled down in the heat, but there’s no one to feel the relief from stray breezes.

The people are all gone.

The people, and the sound. Their chatter, the static from car radios that aren’t working, the hum of engines—all gone. It’s only me and Norah and Connor on this long stretch of road.

“How late is it?” Norah whispers. It’s getting dark, and fast.

“It can’t be that late. We should have hours before—”

“Junebug?”

The voice interrupts me, and without much thought, I walk towards it. Norah and Connor don’t follow me. Maybe they’re seeing their own Annalises again.

“June, are you there?” I feel the hope in her voice like a physical pang in my heart.

“I’m here,” I say into the air. It’s so dark that I’d think it was nighttime if it hadn’t just been the afternoon. “Where are you?”

No reply.

“Annalise?”

A hand brushes mine like a static shock. For the briefest second, I pull away, then reach back out. Our fingers entwine.

She was mine first.

Me and Annalise, thirteen or fourteen years old, in her basement—a finished basement, her parents had money, why were finished basements always a sign of money to me? D.E.B.S. on the big basement TV, playing off a real, physical, mailed-by-Netflix DVD. Amy and Lucy Diamond kiss for the first time, and for a moment, I can imagine it’s me and Annalise.

In some dreams, I am Lucy Diamond performing good deeds in musical montage to win the heart of Annalise/Amy, but it was never us. It never would be. It would be Annalise and another girl, and me and a guy, and me and another girl, and Annalise and another girl. Somewhere buried in the infinite memory of the internet are a million angsty AIM away messages to prove my teenage heartbreak. ~*~ so much for my HaPpY eNdInG ~*~

“Is this real?” I whisper. I tighten my fingers around hers. Her flesh has the normal sort of squishy give that flesh has. My fingers don’t pass through like a ghost, or like pudding. Maybe that’s proof enough.

“I think it’s a dream,” Annalise says. “It feels like a dream, you know? No transitions, just hopping around in time. Seeing you. Seeing Connor. Seeing Norah.”

Yes, that, that’s what this was. A dream. Me, here, on an abandoned highway full of cars with an invisible Annalise.

Me, there, at the mall with her in 2004? 2005? Sharing those uncomfortable original iPod headphones. Trading off playing songs for each other, convinced that this song, this song, would make the other understand our soul and our wants. Feeling like pressing a button on her iPod held the weight of our hearts. Watching each other listen, hoping the same lines hit in the same way.

Then we’re across from each other at Sbarro, writing in brand-new journals from Waldenbooks, pretending we’re the girls in the Dear America books. Annalise’s is one of those hardcover ones with a dark, gold-hued nature-y design and magnetic flaps. I can’t see the cover of mine in this memory—or is it happening right now?—but knowing middle-school me, there’s probably a unicorn involved.

We finish writing, take a bite of lukewarm pizza, and casually slide our diaries across to each other. Right. We’d do this. We’d pour our hearts into an entry and then trade diaries. We never talked about what we wrote. We just used them to fuel the next entry, then traded again, rinse and repeat. I remember it as a lot of angst about our sexualities and school and an eternal dance around our feelings for each other.

“I thought you’d be together,” Annalise says.

“We are! Or …” I peer over my shoulder, then turn in a circle, scanning the road. “We were. We’re on the way to you.” I can’t see them anymore. Panic rises in my chest. “Where are they?”

“With me,” Annalise says. “Or I’m with them? It’s that dream thing. One moment I’m with you, then her, then him. It all makes sense as it’s happening but trying to say it out loud sounds ridiculous, you know?”

Maybe I’m with them, too. Here, with Annalise, in the mall, with Annalise, on campus, with Norah and Connor, waiting in the library for Annalise, conversation stilted, awkward, because the friendships are so new and we keep hitting walls, unsure of what’s okay to say. I’m there with them, trying to hold back, trying not to dive into revealing my every secret, every feeling, every trauma to these people I’ve known for a week, because that’s what’s normal to me but I’ve learned the hard way it’s not normal to most. I want them to like me, because Annalise likes them, and I want to make a good impression, so I keep bottling myself up behind the mask.

“I need to find them. I can’t …” I swallow the words. I can’t do this without them. She was mine first, and they were hers first, but we’re all each other’s now, and I can’t watch the pictures under my messages on the group chat go from three to two to one to none.

“We’ll find them,” Annalise says. “Or I’ll find you, and they’ll find you. Or …”

I start walking back in the direction I last saw them. If this is a dream, I think, then the ground shouldn’t be so solid. Ground is always so soft in dreams. Like walking on clouds. You never feel the vibrations or hear the slaps and stomps and clacks of feet and shoes. Beneath my flats, the asphalt is hard. Feels like it goes all the way to the core of the earth. Solid ground, not a dream.

But my strides are long, like in a dream, when I can take a whole flight of stairs in one glide. Maybe a dream.

I hear Annalise’s footsteps alongside my own, but she’s still invisible to me. I also think she might be barefoot, or in socks. Padding, that’s the word people use when someone walks on be-socked feet. She pads next to me.

“You should be resting,” I say. “Or something. What do you do in hospice?”

“A lot of resting,” Annalise confirms. “You’d think it’d be nice, but half the time I can’t even focus on my Buffy rewatch. Anyway, if this is a dream, then I’m resting right now.”

Long strides, solid asphalt, but I don’t think I’m getting anywhere. I stop. Annalise stops next to me. She remains invisible, but there’s a silver shimmer in the air where I think she stands. Not a single car has their headlights on but the moon is half full and the stars—the stars are blinding. Annalise reflects every single one.

“We’ll find them,” she says.

“How?” I ask.

“I’m with all of you, and you’re all with me.” And we’re all at Applebee’s in college after a writers’ club meeting, drinking mudslides and sangrias, each of us falling in love with our waiter because he’s cute and funny and talks to us more than he probably should. “I can bring us all together. They’re trying to find you, too, but I don’t know why none of you can see each other.”

I shrug. I feel a little drunk, like I really had been drinking a red apple sangria at Applebee’s. “If it’s a dream, then it’s probably like—something, something, not open enough with each other. Our brains are doing that thing brains are supposed to do when you sleep, where they, like, solve all of your problems. My guess is that right now it’s trying to say, hey, nerds, what if you just actually talked about your feelings normally instead of blurting out all of your worst thoughts at one in the morning, knowing that when the sun comes up, you’ll all act like it never happened?” I clear my throat awkwardly. “Or … something like that.”

Do I imagine the glimpse of brown hair among the shimmer? “Oh,” Annalise says softly. “That is a thing I do, isn’t it?”

“It’s a thing we all do,” I assure her with all the enthusiasm of a drunk girl in a bar bathroom.

Annalise is silent for so long without a single telltale shimmer that I worry I’ve lost her, too, and I’m doomed to be alone in this place. When she speaks, her words come out in a blur, like she has to say them as quickly as possible or they won’t come out at all.

“I don’t like that. I don’t like that we’re—like that. I want us to be able to talk to each other. Before—you know. Like …” Her voice stumbles, tongue twisting, and I hear a sound like her stamping a foot. “God, my brain just fritzed right out, but, you know what I mean? I don’t know the … I can’t figure out the words.” She huffs, then sniffles, and I know she’s crying.

“I think I get it,” I say, even though I’m not sure I do. “You don’t want things to … end … with stuff … unsaid?”

“Yeah,” she says. I think she’s pacing. “But also no. What’ll I care if things are unsaid? I’ll be—you know. I want us to be able to talk to each other. To …” She laughs. “Fuck, what I want is that you’ll be able to talk about me.”

It’s like a punch in the gut. Or slamming into cold water, like, ice bucket challenge-cold, the drunk feeling all gone away now. Applebee’s ten years away, D.E.B.S. in the basement and diaries at the mall even farther back. Does she really think we’d ever stop talking about her?

“I want you to make jokes about me, after,” she continues, “And holy shit, yes, please make me into a meme, but I want you to talk about me seriously, too. Promise …” Annalise stumbles over her words again and half-laughs, half-sobs. “Fuck, why can’t I say words? I just want you to promise me that even though you’re all going to be sad and it’s going to be hard to talk about …” She takes a deep, steadying breath, though her voice is thick. “You won’t act like I never happened when the sun comes up?”

I would give anything to be able to sit and write a diary entry here on this empty road and give it to Annalise, so I wouldn’t have to figure out how to say all the things that are too big for my throat to get out.

“Fuck,” I say, eloquently. “Okay, oh my god, yes, trust me, we won’t—we couldn’t ever act like you didn’t happen. We couldn’t forget you.” Nothing I’m saying feels right. None of it’s the magic key to making her feel loved or saving her life. And why can’t I stop smiling? Why do I keep laughing weirdly between sentences? Does she think I’m not taking it seriously?

All I can do is close my eyes and put as much of my heart as possible into every word—emotional intensity like a 13-year-old girl with a crush, like a Care Bear stare—and hope, hope, hope it translates, even if my face makes all the wrong shapes.

“No one will ever be able to get us to stop talking about you,” I continue. “It’s cheesy and cliche to say you’ll always be part of us but fuck it, it’s true. You will. It could be decades after you’re gone, and we’ll be old and sitting in rocking chairs watching the planet burn around us, and I’ll say, hey, remember how Annalise used a meme to tell us she was dying? And Connor or Norah will say, yeah, that was the most millennial shit ever. And we’ll laugh, and then we’ll cry, and you’ll still be … with us.”

I’m crying now, and in that future, and in the basement because Annalise was the only person I could cry in front of when the feelings got too much, and I can’t picture a world where I won’t be right here with her.

The crying turns into sobbing turns into kneeling on the asphalt, not just imagining releasing those emotions into the world, but actually letting them out. Body shaking, loud, ugly sobs, turning into a scream at this whole goddamn plane of existence for even thinking about taking Annalise away from me.

I can’t see Annalise but I can feel her hands stroking my hair. For a moment, I’m consumed by the guilt of breaking down when she’s the one in hospice, but I let that go, too, because how many breakdowns have I held her through during our friendship? This is what we do. We trade off. Yeah, I’m the one who can’t keep my shit together now, but probably it’ll be Annalise later, and I’ll stroke her hair just like this, and Norah and Connor will be there, and we’ll help her feel safe enough to cry. It’s what best friends do.

Finally, finally, the screaming and sobbing go back to normal tears. I swipe awkwardly at my nose with the hem of my shirt. I cough. “You’ll definitely be a meme,” I say. “I’ll make it go viral, if you want.”

This time, when I laugh, she laughs with me. Her teeth flash in the air, followed by the sparkle of her blue eyes. Not all the way, but enough I can see her Hello Kitty pajamas and the fluffy socks she’s wearing. “Sure, make it go viral,” she says, helping me rise to my feet, “but only after I die. Exploit my death to get that sweet sweet Internet engagement.”

“Well, only because you asked.”

Annalise turns her head, and says to someone I can’t see, “There you are! But this is getting silly.” She reaches into empty air, then takes my hand and guides it to the same spot. “Grab on,” she says.

I don’t feel anything to grab on to, but I do it anyway. I grab, and something grabs back, and then she’s right in front of me. She forms out of the air and starlight, like Annalise. Norah. I wrap my arms around her in a fierce hug. Two. That’s two I have back.

“I’m glad that worked,” Annalise says. “I didn’t have another idea. Okay, over here.”

With her guidance, Norah and I both reach for Connor. We each take one of his hands and then, glowing in starlight, more solid than air, he’s here. I hug him extra hard.

After I let go, and then after Norah also hugs him, Connor says, “Can we get out of this weird purgatory now? I’m not a fan.”

“Seconded,” Norah and I say at the same time.

“Motion passes,” Annalise says. “Get back to the car. I think that’ll get you out.” She pauses. “Okay, I’m totally guessing that it will, but I’m doing a great job at this guessing thing so I think it’s worth a try.” Then she launches herself at me, throwing her arms around me. She’s quick to pull Norah and Connor in. “I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hug you,” she says, voice muffled against Norah’s shoulder. “Dream corporeality is so uncertain. Hands, sure, but whole bodies? Who knows.”

We’re all reluctant to pull away, I think, but in the end, Annalise does first. “Get out of purgatory,” she commands. “And get to me. I really, really miss you guys.”

As we walk, the darkness lightens into pre-dawn purple, and people appear out of the air. Some are still in their cars, some are returning, like us. On their faces, I see relief, confusion, despair. Shellshock. I come across the woman with blue hair kneeling next to the girl in Uggs, comforting her as she cries. I pause to ask, “You guys okay?”

“Yeah,” the blue-haired woman says, rubbing slow circles on Ugg Girl’s back. “We’ll be okay. Sometimes you just gotta cry, you know?”

“Yeah,” I say.

Ugg Girl buries her face against the woman’s shoulder. Between the sobs I hear only one muffled word: “goodbye”

We reach the car. Norah and Connor get in, but I’m stopped by something on the road right by my door. A hardcover diary, the design all leaves and branches in dark browns, greens, and golds, with a magnetic clasp. I hold the diary tight against my chest as I climb into the car.

Traffic starts to move. We roll forward slowly, then faster, then we’re past the debris of the traffic-stopping accident that must have started everything. I look out the window, at the golden promise of the sun low, low on the horizon.

Promise you won’t act like I never happened when the sun comes up? I dig a pen out of Norah’s glovebox, open to an empty page, and begin to write.