☆ Evan ☆

It turns out that everything can go to shit very rapidly.

Claire doesn't pick me up in the morning. And, to make matters worse, I'm not allowed to take the car.

"Here," Randall whispers when we're both in the kitchen before Elaine wakes. He slips his bus pass for the month into my hand. "There's nothing I can do when she gets into that state of mind. I'm sorry, but we have to deal with it."

I end up on Northwood's direct line to the school an hour before I would usually leave. Bored out of my mind. I have no music and no phone. Carolyn didn't think to give it back, and I'm not about to sneak into her room to find it.

I hold my house key in my hand, turning the hourglass upside down. The bright red sand falls from above, a noise that's barely audible over the bus rumbling as it drives across the bumps in the road.

Most of the buses in the town run at odd hours, heading toward bigger cities. If I stayed on for long enough, I would eventually leave Northwood. It doesn't matter what direction they're headed in. Inevitably, they leave. When I think about June, when I think about graduation, I also think about how I'm getting out. And I've checked—it would take me about six hours to get to Halifax by bus, and a little over three if I drove.

I sit in the middle row, a newspaper with a half-finished crossword on my right. Four letters; not even one, the clue reads. (The answer is apparently 'none.') In the back, a student cracks the window open to smoke without being noticed.

I flip the hourglass over again. Counting the seconds it takes before the sand reaches the bottom.

The bus arrives at school with fourteen minutes to spare. As I make my way to my locker, Claire intercepts my path. She extends her hands to keep me from passing her. And her eyes are glowing with embers so intense that it burns to meet her gaze.

"What the hell did you do?"

Has she ever been this angry before? I don't know that I recognize this version of Claire Lethbridge. Her clothes are different. An oversized hoodie and washed-out jeans, like she grabbed the first two items of clothing she saw. Her hair is different. She's pushed it over to the right side, so it twists in the opposite direction as mine.

"Evan, don't ignore me. I need to know what happened. I've already heard it from Jenny, but... I don't know if I believe it."

Claire doesn't let me move past her. I try to sidestep, but she plays defence. My palms have gone cold.

"Sure. Whatever she said, it was probably true." I dodge underneath her arm to get to my locker.

Claire brushes her hand against my side. For a second, I jump back. Her eyes go wide. The shock is palpable. "Are you okay? You're being... weird."

"We can talk about it at lunch," I suggest.

"I think we should talk now." Her voice grows hushed, urgent. "I came before my free period. Let's go outside."

I agree with her, shutting my locker. We take the exit door to the back garden. Claire sits on the bench that faces the street, under the lazy shade. I think Elaine told me there was a word for it—a frescade. A shady walkway. A place where the shadows reside, where the darkness pounces. Its claws dig into me, never letting go.

Claire shivers. She doesn't move closer to me. It's a boundary neither of us cross, not when I can tell she's mad. "You need to apologize to Jenny," she starts.

"Is she going to apologize to me?"

She looks at me over her shoulder. "What did she say that would require an apology? It was all truthful, as far as she said." When I don't respond, she sighs. "Listen, I know you've never gotten along with Jenny. I won't mention that, and to be honest, I've gotten used to you two acting cold. But you've been so mysterious lately. What were you doing this weekend? Actually—more important question—what are you doing every time you make excuses?"

"Nothing... nothing that really matters." I tell her I've quit soccer. And then I add, "I joined another club. You can probably guess which one. That's why I was at the mall. I've been busy with it."

Claire takes a deep breath. She composes herself before admitting, "What I don't understand is why you didn't think it was important before. Why do you seem like a totally different person now?" Reaching to tuck her hair behind her ear, I notice her eyes are wet with tears. She turns her eyes skyward to keep them locked inside. "I don't know if we want the same things. I don't know if we've ever wanted the same things. I want us to stay the same, and I don't want to do this."

I let her talk. Because we've been stagnant for three years. "We aren't the same. You're right. I liked that about us."

I think this is one of the few times I've said us to her like that. Claire looks at me like she's thinking the same. "Liked," she says with a sigh, "in the past tense."

"I don't know if I can go back to pretending like I'm fine with your friends. That I'm fine with them thinking less of me. I get it, and I know you want me to just accept it and keep your life the way it should be. But there's no sense in it. I guess Jenny thinks I don't deserve you, and maybe she's right," I say. "I don't. I never have."

Claire sets her head in her hands. Her body shakes from the sobs. She shrugs me off when I try to put my hand on her back. "I didn't want this to happen. All I wanted was to explain. I don't... I can make them understand. I can—"

"Claire, you know it's true. You said it yourself. Please, don't make me out to be such a jerk."

"You are a jerk," she replies. Ambling to her feet, she wipes her face. At the last moment, she whirls around. "How long?"

I hesitate. "What?"

She jabs her finger at me. "How long have you known? How long have you kept it yourself? A long time, I'm betting. That's what makes you a jerk. Not that you don't love me. That you knew, and you didn't care enough to break my heart before I fell in too deep."

Claire turns back around, fading into the early morning bustle. It hits me that I don't know what she wants me to do. If she expects me to fight. If she expects me to give up.

My hands are clenched to my sides. I'm holding the bench as if the wood is going to snap in half. I wait for it to splinter and leave me stranded. I wait for the darkness to envelop my body, then devour me whole.

☆ ☽ ☆

The cafeteria is packed at lunch. The tables are filled, each face turned towards their friends and discussing amongst themselves. I keep my eyes straight ahead, my fingers touching the coins in my pocket.

I shuffle up to the counter. The interaction seems to take an abnormally long time, in that way that time passes when I'm lethargic, barely awake. I blink and my hand offers the money to the cashier. It extends in midair as if detached from the rest of me.

I blink again, and there's someone next to me. She appears out of thin air to take my side as I accept my sandwich.

Lifting my face, I realize that it's Willow. She stands perfectly centred on the floor tiles, the edge of her soles aligned with the triangular pattern. "Where are you eating lunch?"

"Probably the basement," I answer.

Willow's eyebrows knit together. "No, I can't let you do that. Come with me." She takes my side and leads me to the band room. The dark wooden walls crisscross, meeting at the slanted ceiling. The door clicks as it closes, sealing off any source of outside noise. Speckles of dust float in the beam of fluorescent light. The chairs are assembled in rows, but only one is filled. Lucas Azan sits with his feet on top of an empty violin case, intently focused on the screen of his phone.

Willow fetches her lunchbox from her book bag. She motions for me to take a seat, then tosses her straw at Lucas. He doesn't seem to notice that it lands on his head. "This is much better than the basement. It's a good hiding place. If you want to cry—which is perfectly allowed—nobody will hear you. If you want to scream... it's the same deal. This is a no-judgement zone, mostly."

"So, who told you?"

She smiles sheepishly. "Jenny did. She gloated, really, that Claire had ended it. Did I make it too obvious?"

Lucas's head bobs up. "What? Claire broke up with you?"

"What planet are you living on, Azan?" Willow drapes her shoes on top of Lucas's. "Where's Seb?"

He jerks his head towards the door and replies, "Practicing for theatre. His drama class is doing Romeo and Juliet. Wouldn't let me do it with him, even though I offered."

Willow snorts. Under her breath, she says: "So typical. It's the perfect play for those two fated lovers." Louder, she asks, "What part would you play?"

"Don't go there," Lucas warns.

She smiles to herself but says nothing further on the subject. Turning back to me, she muses about it for six peaceful seconds, then takes her chance. "I guess we'd better get working on your apology, McKenna. What's the damage? Is it catastrophic, scorched-earth level bad?"

"It's worse," I say.

"It's over for good?" Lucas asks. When I nod, he types a message into his phone with a satisfied glint in his eyes. "Figures. Seb owes me twenty bucks."

"If you two made a bet about whether they would break up, I will punch you both until you're on the ground," Willow threatens.

He shrugs. "Come on, it's not personal. We've got a bet going for everything. It's like the superlatives section of the yearbook, but a million times more fun. For the record, I owe him fifty dollars if you win on a scratch ticket and wind up losing it."

The door creaks open and Sebastian enters, looking flustered. He says hello to Willow and me and skirts past Lucas, sifting through the rows of chairs. "Where's the prop?"

"What prop?" Lucas asks innocently.

Sebastian lobs his book at him. Without flinching, Lucas catches it and returns to staring at his phone.

"You know what prop," Sebastian says, "the rose. The plastic rose—I need it."

Exchanging a glance between them, Willow hides the smile of an accomplice and leans back in her seat. "Why? If you gave that to your girlfriend, all she'd do is complain that it wasn't real."

Sebastian sighs heavily. The straw sitting on Lucas's head tumbles onto his lap, causing Willow to burst out laughing. The sound rings off the walls, trapped inside the confines of the room. It echoes, getting softer until the silence suffocates it.

I don't know how they can bear to stay enclosed like this. Music would carry through the space, but it seems eerie without it. The lack of what should occupy the room; what intruding makes me remember. It's etched into it. The room itself waits in earnest for band class to resume, so that it can be used as intended.

Sebastian finds his theatre prop stored at the back of the room, hidden from view. He berates Lucas about it before rushing from the room, all without mentioning Jenny.

I sigh. As far as I'm concerned, I should be able to see the cracks in the foundation. The places where Claire and I didn't fit.

But I couldn't. I didn't have a clue about where to look, and I certainly didn't want to see it. I stayed in the wrong room for three years, hoping that eventually, it would make sense. That I would become a permanent fixture. But I couldn't. There was nowhere for me to go. Nowhere for Claire to place me—simply because there was no space for me to occupy.

Once lunch is over, I drift through my classes. My feet drag behind me as I walk, moving from the main hallway to the stairway that leads to the basement.

And I stay in my hiding place, clasping my tiny hourglass in my palms. I remove it from my key ring, spinning it in circles. The sand bounces around in its jar, never quite settling at the bottom.

It falls through the gap in my fingertips and rolls across the linoleum, heading shakily beneath the gap between the stairs and the floor. I pounce towards it, trying to catch the hourglass, but I can't see where it landed. Scouring the floor, and even the bathrooms across from me, I find nothing but particles of dust.

The hourglass is gone.