The Girl He didn't choose

r, maybe, with the right words, the ones that would

to lock up if you get in late

he universe wasn't

hat made her look more expensive somehow. "You disappeared," she accused, linking

eeded o

lying, which was inconvenient because I was doing it constantl

atever else she was, she loved me. That made

"Notes to organize. My aunt will

my cheek and left a fingerprint of glit

t fa

the whole world and then ap

also because it was easier than saying, I

gged her like a celebrity meet-and-greet. I ordered a Bolt and p

. Streetlights slipped over my face in gold bars, flipping the city into slides. I watched people on sidewalks, couples leaning into ea

and "Are you with Viv?" and "What do you mean by too quiet," and deleted th

t I kept forgetting to bring inside when it rained. I let myself in quietly, toed off my shoes, and dropped

called from the bedroom

id. "Stew sm

mumbled. "D

ll

'd cleaned it with the wrong cloth. My desk was a graveyard of half-finished note

corners softened by being shoved into bags, pages wrinkled from tears I would not be confessing to

now. If I lose him, I lose the part

de me want to cross them out. I didn't. I underlined "

on the bedspre

Nigh

bandage you slap over a wound so you don't have to look. I typed "Night" and stared at it until the le

my hand. It didn't all come away. Glitter never really does. You find it for days, weeks, in places it ha

. I lay down and stared at the ceiling like it might offe

et. Not

ls hear more. I wished, for onc

ne that if I stood really still, t

n't cruel. They weren't absent, either. They just... lived in their own storm clouds, loud argume

d daughter. The ghost who didn't a

y was a kind of power

ook. Something with horses, probably. My escape was always galloping somewhere else.) Kids streamed past me in loud clusters, ponytails

t walk past me

rown hair slid like water over one shoulder. She was ten, like me, but she

I muttered, half-

g her long legs like she owned the concrete.

ed that before, like lateness was just s

spiratorial. "Wanna wait t

ng my shadows into somet

tion always raising her hand in class not just because she knew the answer, but because

ard. If I stayed home, she dragged me to the sleepover. She'd introduce me like I was the punchline to som

le laughed anyway because Vivienne had a

things like that

, there w

just one of many orbiting moons. At birthday parties, I'd watch her float between groups, laughing with the b

ine, pulling me into the spotlight. "There you are," sh

e, because that's what ghosts

eshman year, that still bur

, hers was bright coral, me soft pink when she

because what do yo

watched me with those pi

I admitted. "You're

ctory. "Exactly. I make thin

t... true, in the way that ma

coral polish. "Here. Try th

ed at my hands, they look

vienne and I were a packaged deal. If you go

new the ending, that sooner or later, the boy wh

g a ghost girl, people notice you o

ne? She's

when I found Victor's message glowing on Vivienne's phone last night, the

have seen

don't see.

ing my own life for