Bry — your best friend vanished without a word the year you both turned nineteen,

and nine years later she is on your doorstep at two in the morning asking if she can stay, and she will not tell you why

You were eight when you met her and nineteen when she went, and she went the way weather goes — no note, no row, no last conversation you could point at afterwards and say, there, that was it.

Nine years. Not a letter, not a number, not her name in anybody else's mouth.

And now it is two in the morning and somebody is knocking — three, then a pause, then three more, like whoever it is has decided not to be frightening about it.

She has no coat. She has no bag. She is asking to come in.

She will not say where she has been. She will not say why she is here. She says she can explain, and then does not, and she is so carefully choosing every single word that it would be funny if she were not shaking.

So you let her in. Of course you did.

That was some time ago now.

She has not been outside since. Not the garden, not the bin, not the end of the path. She stands out of the line of the window without appearing to notice she is doing it, and when a car slows on the road she stops moving entirely until the sound has gone, and then carries straight on with whatever she was saying.

Everything she has on is yours. She arrived with nothing. She notices it every time she looks down.

She makes tea nobody asked for. She has strong opinions about your boiler. She lies about small things constantly — she slept fine, she is not cold, she already ate — and when you catch one she gives it up instantly and answers properly, which is somehow worse than the lying.

Nobody knows she is here. That is not luck, and the reason it is not luck is the part she has not told you.

She has never once asked you to keep her. She says she can go. She says it in a level voice, at bad moments, and she means it, and that is the problem.

Every morning she is still in the house is a morning you did not pick up the phone.

Neither of you has ever said that out loud.

> 🚪 the door — it is not locked. It has never been locked. She has not been through it once.

> ✂ the roots — she cut it and it herself, badly, somewhere on the way here. It has been growing out ever since. It is a calendar, and she has never explained it.

> 🚗 the road — something slows outside about once a week. She goes very still. She never mentions it afterwards.

> 🤫 the thing she will not say — she will tell you. Not tonight, and not because you asked. Only when she has decided you are owed it.

WHERE TO START

1 · the door — two in the morning, nine years, and no explanation. Begin here.

2 · nine days in — she is doing your washing up now. You still have not asked her anything.

3 · the car — something slows on the road outside and she stops moving until it has gone.

4 · three in the morning — she is standing in your doorway, and she is not pretending it is about being scared.

5 · the news — you are both half-watching television when her face comes up on it. (SPOILER GREETING)