CHAPTER 3
Seven days before my birthday, Noa decided I was having one. Apparently, the previous twenty-seven years had been practice, and this year she had finally grown tired of my lack of enthusiasm. She had been talking for nearly five minutes before I realized the conversation required my participation. “Are you listening to me?”
I looked up from the report on my screen. “Absolutely.”
“What did I just say?”
“That feels unnecessarily aggressive.” Noa’s chair rolled into the narrow space between our desks. She crossed her arms; I smiled. She didn’t. “Okay. I caught something about dinner.”
“I said dinner three minutes ago.”
“See? Listening.”
“You’re impossible.”
“So I’ve been told.” She stared at me for another second before reaching over and stealing the coffee sitting beside my keyboard. I watched her take a sip. “You know that’s mine.”
“Consider it a planning fee.”
“You haven’t planned anything.”
“Because you won’t tell me what you want to do.”
I leaned back in my chair.
That was the problem. I genuinely didn’t know.
Birthdays are strange like that. As a kid, you could name twelve things you wanted without taking a breath. You know exactly what kind of cake you wanted, exactly who you wanted there, exactly what present would make your entire life complete. Then somewhere along the way, people started asking what you wanted for your birthday, and the answer became I don’t know.
Maybe adulthood was just slowly running out of answers to that question. “I want my coffee back.” Noa slid it farther away.
“Besides that.”
“Sleep.”
“Lara.”
“Financial stability.”
“I’m going to hit you.”
“A pony?” That finally broke her. She laughed, loud enough that the dispatcher across from us glanced over his monitor. There. That was better; I missed that sound.
Actually, I’d missed a lot of things lately. For the last few weeks, I’d been present without really being anywhere. Going to work. Coming home. Walking Maven. Sleeping when my brain allowed it. Repeating the process until days began bleeding together. Lately, though, things had been quiet.
Not normal; I wasn’t ready to give it that word. Quiet. There was a difference. Nothing strange had happened in days. I’d stopped waking up and immediately checking the clock. I’d stop searching Maven’s face every time she stared toward the hallway. I’d even managed to shower two nights ago without convincing myself there was something on the other side of the curtain.
Progress. Pathetic progress, maybe, but progress. “So,” Noa said, pulling me back. “Dinner. Drinks. Dancing.”
“No dancing.”
“Dinner. Drinks. Dancing.”
“I hate you.”
“You love me.”
“Debatable.”
She grinned and spun her chair back towards her desk. “Do you remember my twenty-first?” I asked. She stopped. Slowly, she turned back, facing me. “Oh. God.” I laughed. “Exactly.”
“No. We’re not talking about that.”
“You threw up in a planter.”
“That has never been proven.”
“I held your hair.”
“You were drunk.”
“So were you.”
“Which makes you an unreliable witness.” I laughed again, and for a few minutes we did exactly what people who had known each other too long eventually did- we started digging through the graveyard of our twenties. The apartment with the broken air-conditioner. The professor Noa had been convinced was secretly sleeping with one of the graduate assistants. The night we drove forty minutes because someone told us there was a twenty-four-hour Taco place, only to discover it had closed six months earlier. People we’d forgotten. People we wished we could forget. Versions of ourselves that felt like entirely different women. “You were worse than me,” Noa said.
“Absolutely not.”
“You disappeared constantly.”
“I did not.” She gave me a look. “What?”
“Lara.”
“What?”
“You literally disappeared from Kendra’s party.” I searched my memory. “Kendra…”
“Red hair. Psych major. Had that awful apartment off campus.”
“Oh.” I smiled. “Her.”
“I didn’t disappear.” Noa’s expression changed. Not dramatically.
“Yes, you did.”
“I left.”
“No, you didn’t.”
I waited for the punchline. It didn’t come. “You were wasted,” I said.
“So were you.”
“Exactly.”
“No, Lara.” She leaned against the arm of her chair. “I remember that night because I thought something happened to you.” Something in her voice made me sit a little straighter.
“What are you talking about?”
“You seriously don’t remember?”
I searched again. Kendra’s apartment. Cheap vodka. Someone had broken a lamp. There had been music coming from a speaker balanced on top of the refrigerator. I remember Noa wearing a black dress. I remembered- nothing after that. Not darkness. Not confusion. Just nothing. I shrugged. “I probably went home.”
“You didn’t.”
“Noa-“ she wasn’t joking anymore. “For like three hours.” A strange little chill moved across my shoulders. I ignored it. “Okay, that’s dramatic.”
“It wasn’t dramatic at the time.”
“Where did I go?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never asked?”
“Of course I asked.”
“And?”
“You told me you fell asleep.” I laughed. “There you go.” Noa didn’t.
“Where?” The question sat between us. I opened my mouth, then shut it. Somewhere behind us, a phone rang.
One of the other dispatchers answered it, voice settling immediately into the practiced calm we all knew by heart. The room continued around us. I tried to picture that night again. The apartment, the kitchen, Noa’s black dress, after that- nothing. “Probably somebody’s room.” Noa’s eyebrows lifted. “What?”
“You said you fell asleep in your car.”
“Oh.”
" And your car was still outside Kendra’s apartment when we found you.” I frowned.
" Then I was in my car.”
“No.” I looked at her. Noa hesitated. “You weren’t.” For some reason, that bothered me more than it should have.
“So where was I?”
“I don’t know. That’s the point.” I stared at her.
Then she smiled suddenly, shaking her head. “God, we were idiots.” The tension broke so quickly I almost laughed from relief. “Speak for yourself.”
“Oh, please. You one ate ramen with a makeup brush because we’d run out of forks.”
“It was clean.”
“It was an eyeshadow brush.”
“It worked.”
Another story replaced that one. Then another. In no time we were laughing again, arguing about whose memory was worse and whether either of us should’ve been allowed to graduate. But every so often, while Noa talked, I found myself reaching backward. Kendra’s apartment. The music. The broken lamp. The black dress. And then- nothing.
It shouldn’t have bothered me. People forget things, especially drunk twenty-one-year-olds at college parties. There was nothing strange about that. Nothing at all. Still, sometime later, when Noa had returned to her station and the morning settled back into the familiar rhythm of ringing phones and clicking keyboards, I opened the calendar on my computer. I counted backwards.
Seven years. Then stared at the date for a moment without knowing why.
My birthday had been nine days later.
By the time my shift ended, I’d managed to convince myself the date meant nothing. Nine days, that was it. Nine days wasn’t a pattern. It wasn’t even interesting. If Noa hadn’t brought up the party, I wouldn’t have remembered it all. Technically, I still didn’t.
I grabbed my bag from beneath the desk and waited while Noa finished logging out. “You’re thinking about it.” I didn’t bother pretending I didn’t know what she meant. “No.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“And you’re weirdly committed to making one forgotten college party sound like an unsolved disappearance.” She stood and pulled her jacket over one arm. “You asked.”
“You brought it up.”
“You asked if I remembered your twenty-first.”
“And somehow that turned into you accusing me of vanishing into the night.”
“I didn’t accuse you of anything.”
“You used the word disappeared.”
“Because you disappeared.” I groaned and started toward the doors. “I’m going home.”
“To think about it?”
“To feed my dog.”
“While thinking about it.” I pushed through the door without answering. Noa’s laugh followed me into the hallway.
Outside, the afternoon had that strange almost- fall feeling to it- the kind where the sun was still warm but the breeze had started making promises it couldn’t keep yet. I stood beside my car for a moment and let it hit my face. This was real. Parking lot. Sun. Keys digging in my palm. No mystery. No missing time. No impossible woman. Just me.
I got into my car. My phone rang before I’d even pulled out of the parking space. Mom.
I considered letting it go to voicemail. Not because I didn’t want to talk to her. Because talking to my mother was rarely a phone call. It was a commitment. I answered anyway. “Hey.” I smiled and put the phone on speaker. “Were you expecting someone else?”
“I was expecting my daughter to call me first for once.”
“I called you Sunday.”
“After I texted you.”
“That still counts.”
“It absolutely does not.”
I pulled out of the parking lot. Talking to my mother had always been easy, even when everything else between us wasn’t. There were years of our relationship I couldn’t explain without making it sound worse than it had been, and others I couldn’t explain without making it sound better. We loved each other. That was the simplest version. Sometimes the simplest version was enough.
“So,” she said, “what are we doing for your birthday?”
I sighed. “You and Noa have formed some kind of alliance I don’t know about?”
“I like Noa.”
“I know. That’s the problem.”
“She has sense.”
“She threw up in a planter on her twetny-first birthday.”
There was a pause. Then my mother laughed. “See? That’s why I like her.”
“Unbelievable.”
“What did she plan?”
“Dinner, apparently. Drinks. She’s campaigning heavily for dancing.”
“You should go.”
“I knew you were going to say that.”
“You’re twenty-nine.”
“Not yet.”
“Close enough.” I stopped at a red light. For a second, neither of us said anything. The party slipped back into my mind. I don’t know why. Maybe because we’d been talking about Noa’s twenty-first. Maybe because once your brain noticed a missing piece, it couldn’t resist running its fingers around the edges. “Hey, Mom?”
“Mhm?”
“Do you remember my twenty-first birthday?” The question sounded strange the second it left my mouth. She didn’t answer immediately. Not long enough to be weird. Just long enough to notice. “Of course.”
“What did we do?”
“You came home that weekend.” That sounded right. A vague image surfaced. Cake on the kitchen counter. My mother complaining because I’d picked icing off one side before she’d taken pictures. “Yeah, you made that chocolate cake.”
“With the strawberries.”
“Yeah.” The light turned green. I drove. “Why?”
“No reason.”
“Lara-“ “Why are you asking?” I hesitated, then decided it was stupid enough to say out loud. “Noa reminded me about this party we went to right before my birthday that year.”
“Kendra’s?” My foot lifted slightly from the accelerator. The car slowed. I hadn’t told her whose party. For a moment, all I heard was the soft rush of the air conditioner. Then I laughed.
“How the hell do you remember Kendra?” Another pause. “You talked about her all the time back then.”
“Did I?”
“I think so.” I tried to picture Kendra again. Red hair. Psych major. Awful apartment. That was basically all I had. “Apparently I disappeared from her party. My mother laughed. Not nervously. Not strangely. Just the tired laugh of a woman hearing about something stupid her daughter had done in college. “I don’t even want to know.”
“Neither do I.”
“Probably for the best.”
“Noa said she couldn’t find me for three hours.”
“Well, were you drinking?”
“Obviously.”
“There you go.” I smiled. “That was my theory.”
“College kids get drunk and do stupid things. I’m pretty sure that’s the entire business model.” I laughed. “See? This is why I called you.”
“To validate your poor decisions?”
“Exactly.”
“Happy to help.”
The conversation moved on. She told me about a woman at the grocery store who’d tried to bring twelve items through the ten-items-or-less lane and apparently committed an unforgivable crime against humanity. I told her about Maven stealing half a sandwich off my plate the night before. We argued about whether that was my fault. It was.
Eventually, I pulled into my apartment complex. “I just got home.”
“Okay, baby. I’ll let you go.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
I reached for the button to end the call. “Lara-“ I stopped. “What?” Nothing.
Then, “Don’t forget to tell me where you and Noa decide to go.”
“I won’t.”
“You will.”
“Probably.” She laughed. “Bye, baby.”
“Bye.”
The call ended. I sat there for a second; something was bothering me. Not enough to scare me. Barely enough to notice. Then I realized what it was, Kendra. I unlocked my phone and opened messages. How did my mom know whose party it was? I stared at the text, then deleted it. There were a hundred explanations. I’d probably told her about it afterward. Maybe Noa had. Maybe Kendra had been more important to me than I remembered. Seven years was a long time. I dropped my phone into my bag and went upstairs.
Maven met me at the door like I’d returned from war. Whatever unease I’d carried home lasted approximately three seconds before sixty pounds of dog slammed into my legs. “Hi. Yes. Hello. I missed you too.”
Maven followed me farther into the apartment, close enough that every few steps her nose bumped the back of my leg. Apparently, my eight-hour absence had been traumatic. “You survived,” I told her, dropping my bag onto the kitchen counter. “Against all odds.” Her tail hit the cabinet. “I know brave girl.”
I kicked off my shoes and opened the fridge, staring into it like something new might have appeared since this morning. Leftover takeout. Half a bottle of wine. Eggs. A questonable container of strawberries I was pretty sure had crossed over sometime Tuesday. Maven sat beside me. “No.”
She stared. “You have food.” Her ears perked. “Actual food. Expensive food, I might add.” Nothing. I grabbed the takeout. “Manipulative.”
Her tail thumped once against the floor. I changed while the food neated, trading my work clothes for an oversized t-shirt and shorts. By the time I came back into the kitchen, Maven had positioned herself directly in front of the microwave. “You know that’s mine, right?” She looked at me. I looked at her. “You’re getting one bite.” We both knew that was a lie.
My phone buzzed agaisnt the counter.
Noa: so are we doing cute birthday or slutty birthday? I laughed.
ME: those are the options?
Three dots appeared immediately.
NOA: At 28? Yes.
ME: I hate you.
NOA: you love me. Answer the question.
I carried my food to the couch and tucked my feet underneath me. Maven climbed up beside me without invitation, turned in three unnecessary circles, and dropped her entire weight against my thigh.
ME: cute
The response came before I could put my phone down.
NOA: wrong.
ME: then why ask??
NOA: to give you the illusion of choice.
I smiled and shook my head. For the next twenty minutes, Noa sent me screenshots of places she’d apparently been researching while pretending to work. Rooftop bars. A restaurant with drinks that smoked. Some place that looked like it required reservations, a dress code, and a small loan. Normal things. I needed some normal things.
By the time I finished eating, the weird moment with my mom had already started shrinking into something embarrassing. Of course she knew whose party it was. Maybe I’d mentioned Kendra before. Maybe Noa had. Maybe Kendra had posted something online, and Mom had seen it. There were a hundred explanations.
I didn’t need a hundred. I just needed one.
I set my plate on the coffee table and reached for the remote. Maven’s head lifted. “What?” She wasn’t looking at me. Her ears had gone forward, eyes fixed on the hallway. I followed her stare; nothing. “Maven.” She stood.
The movement was slow enough to make me lower the remote. “Hey.” Her tail stopped moving. The apartment was quiet except for the television menu cycling through the same irritating music and the low hum of the air conditioner. Maven stepped off the couch. She moved toward the hallway, stopped, then looked back at me. “Nope.” She looked down the hall again.
“Absolutely not. I’ve seen this movie.” Normally, that would've earned me at least a glance. She didn’t move a muscle.
I muted the television. The apartment became too quiet. “Maven?” A low sound rolled from her chest, not quite a growl but close. I sat up; she rarely did that. “Maven, come here.” Her head tilted.
For one strange second, I thought she was listening to something. Then I heard it too. Three soft knocks; I froze. They hadn’t come from the front door. They’d come from somewhere down the hall. I stared toward my bedroom. The rational part of my brain arrived immediately with its clipboard and list of explanations. Pipes. Neighbor. Something shifted in the wall. Apartment buildings made noise. I knew that.
Maven apparently did not care about the rational part of my brain. Her fur lifted around her shoulders. Three more knocks, same rhythm, soft. Deliberate. My stomach tightened. “Okay.” I stood, grabbing my phone from the couch. “Probably the pipes.” Maven glanced back at me. “Don’t look at me like that.” I turned on the hallway light. Nothing changed; of course nothing changed.
I took a step. Maven moved in front of me. I took another, and she stayed there. “Maven.” She stopped outside my bedroom. So did I. The door was open. I could see the edge of my bed, the dresser, the pile of laundry I’d been ignoring for three days. Everything exactly where I’d left it. “See?” I stepped around her. “Nothing.”
Then the bedroom light flickered. Once. Twice. And went out. I stopped. “No.” It came back on. I stared at the bulb. “Absolutely not,” Maven whined behind me. I turned to her. “You wanna move?” She didn’t. “Great. Me neither.”
I reached inside the room and flipped the switch off, then back on. The light worked normally. I waited. Nothing. “There.” I exhaled, although I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath. “Bad bulb.”
I turned toward Maven. She wasn’t looking at the light anymore. She was looking at me. No. Not me. My shoulder. A sudden heat prickled beneath my shirt. I reached for it instinctively. The scar. My fingers pressed against the fabric covering it. Warm. Nor painful. Just… warm. My stomach dropped. Maven took one step backward. “Maven?” Her ears flattened. The warmth disappeared, just like that.
The television unmuted itself in the living room. Sound exploded through the apartment. I jumped so hard my phone nearly hit the floor. “Jesus Christ.” For a few seconds, I just stood there with one hand over my chest. Then I laughed. I couldn’t help it, it came out thin and breathless and a little too loud. “Okay. Coo;. Everything’s haunted.”
Maven sneezed. “Glad you agree.” I walked back into the living room and grabbed the remote. The mute icon was gone. Maybe I’d hit something. Maybe the remote had been wedged between the cushions. Maybe the lightbulb was going bad. And scars could feel strange sometimes. Nerves. Weather. Stress.
There. Four explanations. Five, if I counted exhaustion. I turned the television off completely. “Bed.” Maven didn’t argue. That should have bothered me more than it did. Twenty minutes later, I was under the covers scrolling through my phone while Maven lay pressed against my legs. I’d almost convinced myself the entire thing had been stupid when my screen lit up with a text. Mom.
For some reason, my stomach clenched before I even opened it.
MOM: Found something else of Grandma’s today. I think you should have it.
A picture loaded beneath the message. It was a small wooden box. Dark. Old. Scratched around the edges. There was a symbol carved into the lid. I stared at it. My thumb stopped against the screen. I’d never seen that box before. I knew that; I was certain of it. but the symbol- my hand moved to my shoulder. The scar beneath my shirt was warm again. And before I could stop myself, a thought slipped through my mind with the quiet certainty of a memory. She kept it.
I sat completely still. Maven lifted her head. I read the word again even though they weren’t written anywhere. She kept it. My phone buzzed.
MOM: Lara?
I swallowed, then typed with suddenly unsteady fingers.
ME: where did you find that?
The three dots appeared, disappeared. Apperared again. Finally-
MOM: in her things.
I stared at the answer. Something about it bothered me. Not what she said. What she didn’t. I stared typing.
ME: what’s inside??
Before I could send it, another message came through.
MOM: don’t open it yet.